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/ 

WORCESTER COUNTY 



ADDRESSES 



OF 



INAUGURATION AND DEDICATION, 



WORCESTER, NOVEMBER 11. 1868. 



MEMORIAL NOTICE OF JOHN BOYNTON, Esq., 

L ^ountier of li)£ Inatitutj. 



> 



G' 



MEMORIAL NOTICE OF HON. ICHABOD WASHBURN, 

iFounUn: of tlje practical ilSccf)antcal department. 




WORCESTER: 
PRINTED BY CHARLES HAMILTON, 

PALLADIUM OFFICE. 

1869. 



\ 



A 
\ 



\ 



^ 






CONTENTS, 



PAGE. 

Trustees and Instructors 7 

Foundation, 9 

Charter, 13 

Library and Apparatus Fund, 15 

Mechanical Department, 17 

Worcester Building Fund, ....... 24 

Fund for Instruction, ... .... 27 

Fund for Apparatus, Books, &c 28 

Memorial Notice of John Boynton. Esq., .... 29 
Address of Hon. D. Waldo Lincoln, Chairman of Building 

Committee, on delivery of the Keys, ... 31 
Acceptance of Building by Hon. Stephen Salisbury, 

President of the Trustees, 35 

Address of the President 39 

by Prof. Chester S. Lyman, of Sheffield Scientific 

School. Yale College, 42 

'•• Prof. John S. Woodman, of Chandler Scientific 

Department of Dartmouth College, ... 56 
'• Charles O. Thompson, Professor of Chemistry, 

and Principal of the Institute, .... 66 
^' Hon. James B. Blake, Mayor of Woi-cester, . 89 
'" Governor Alexander H. Bullock, . . 93 
'• Rev. Dr. S. Sweetser, of Worcester, . . 100 
•* Prof. Wm. 1P. Atkinson, of Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology, 104 

"' Thomas A. Thacher, Professor of Latin Lan- 
guage, &c., Yale College, 110 

'• Hon. Emory Washburn. Professor in Harvard 

University. 114 

Abstract of Address by Ho?^. George F. Hoar, . . 120 

Address by Judge Chapin, of Worcester, . . . . 121 

Memorial Notice of Hon. Ichabod Washburn. . . . 125 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE. 

John Boynton, Esq., Frontispiece 

Hon. Ichabod Washburn, 17 

Boynton Hall, 26 

The Work Shop 38 



TRUSTEP]S. 



Hon. STEPHEN SALISBUKY, President. 
Hon. D. WALDO LINCOLN. Secretary. 
DAVID WHITCOMB, Esq., Treasurer. 

Rev. SETII SWEETSER, D. D., 
Hon. GEORGE F. HOAR, 
Hon. EMORY WASHBURN. 
Hon. ICHABOD WASHBURN, * 
Rev. ALONZO HILL. D. D., 
ALPHEUS HARDING, Jr., Esq., 
Rev. H. K. PERVEAR, 
CHARLES H. MORGAN. Esq., 
Hon. JAMES B. BLAKE. 



INSTRUCTORS. 

CHARLES O. THOMPSON, Chemistry. 

GEORGE E. GLADWIN, Free-Hand and Mechanical Drawing. 
GEORGE I. ALDEN, Civil and 3Iechanical Engineering. 
MISS HARRIET GOODRICH, Elementary Mathematics. 



superintendent of machine shop, 
MILTON P. HIGGINS. 

♦After decease of Hon. Ichabod Washburn, P. L. Moen, Esq., was elected Trustee. 



FOUNDATION. 



Letter of Gift and Instructions from John Boynton, Esq., 

Founder of the Worcester County Free Institute 

of Industrial Science. 



" Being desirous to devote a portion of the property, which, in the 
good Providence of God has fallen to my lot, for the promotion of the 
welfare and happiness of ray fellow men, I have determined to set 
apart, and do here set apart, and give the sura of One Hundred 
Thousand Dollars, for the endowment and perpetual support of a 
free school, or institute, to be established in the County of Worcester, 
for the benefit of the youth of that County. 

"The aim of this school shall ever be the instruction of youth in 
those branches of education not usually taught in the public schools, 
which are essential, and best adapted to train the young for practical 
life; and especially, that such as are intending to be mechanics, or 
manufacturers, or farmers, ina,y attain an understanding of the princi- 
ples of science applicable to their pursuits, which will qualify them in 
the best manner for an intelligent and successful prosecution of their 
business; and that such as intend to devote themselves to any of the 
branches of mercantile business, shall in like manner be instructed in 
those parts of learning most serviceable to them ; and that such as 
design to become teachers of comraon schools, or schools of the like 
character as our comraon schools, may be in the best manner fitted for 
their calling ; and the various schemes of study and courses of instruc- 
tion sliall always be in accordance with this fundamental design, so as 
thereby to meet a want which our public schools have hitherto but in- 
adequately supplied. 

" And that my design may be the more fully understood, it is hereby 
enjoined upon those who shall be entrusted with executing this my pur- 
pose, that the following studies, or such parts of them as can be profit- 
ably pursued, shall always be embraced in the course of instruction — 
namely : Mathematics, with its simpler application to surveying, lev- 
eling, &c. ; Physics and Mechanics ; Mechanical Engineering ; Civil 
Engineering; including drawing, designing and modeling; Architecture, 

2 



10 

as applied to construction of buildings, including value and strength of 
materials; Chemistry, elementary and practical, as applied to the vari- 
ous arts, and to agriculture; Metallurgy, the composition and working 
of metals ; Geology, with its application to mining and agriculture ; 
Astronomy, with its application to surveying and navigation ; Political 
Economy, including commercial laws and civil polity; Botany and 
Zoology, as applied to plants and animals used for food, and in the 
arts ; Book-Keeping, Geography, the French Language and the Science 
of Teaching ; together with such other kindred branches as experience 
may, from time to time, show to be necessary to the better securing of 
the general purpose. 

'•And these studies shall be arranged, and instruction given in them, 
according to the wisdom and discretion of those to whose care this insti- 
tution is entrusted; it being understood tiiat the course shall include 
studies with text books and recitations, and lectures with experiments, 
and all such practical applications of the use of tools and instruments, 
and the working of machinery, as may be available, so that the benefits 
of this school shall not be confined to the theories of science, but as far 
as possible shall extend to that practical application of its principles 
which will give the greatest advantage in the afiiiirs of life. 

'•This institute shall be located in the city of Worcester, provided the 
citizejis of Worcester furnish the funds necessary to purchase a lot and 
erect a suitable building or buildings for its accommodation, so that the 
same shall be ready foi- use on or before the first day of May. in the 
year 1867.* 

•'The oversight of this institution shall be in a board of twelve trus- 
tees, constituted as follows : The Mayor of the city of Worcester, for 
the time being, shall always be one; one shall be appointed by the 
Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; three 
shall be pastors of churches in the city of Worcester, of three difi'erent 
religious denominations, namely: The Orthodox Congregationalist, the 
Baptist and the Unitarian; the remaining seven shall be laymen of 
good intellio'ence and respectability, who shall be elected for their 
ability to direct the afi:airs of such a school. And when any vacancj- 
occurs by death or resignation, the place shall be filled by election, in 
which the choice shall be determined bj^ the major vote of the members 
of the board of trustees, regard being always had to the above regula- 
tions. 

•'In the appointment of the first board of trustees, the individuals to 
constitute the board will be selected by myself, with such advice and 
concurrence of those who co-opeiate in this design as propriet}* dictates, 
and it is expected that their names, in whole or in pait, will be con- 
tained in the act of incoi-poi'ation. 

'•This board shall receive and hold, and securel}'- invest the sum 
above named, and any and all other funds, of whatsoever kind, may be 
entrusted to them for the benefit of this school, and they and their suc- 

*Tlie time for comi)letiiij( tlio ImiUJiiig was extended. 



11 

cessors in trust are solemnly enjoined to fidelity in the care and use of 
all such funds, and not to sutter the same to be lost, or diminished, and 
to use the income of the above named fund, and that only, to meet the 
current expenses of the instruction of the school, exclusive of repairs, 
or improvement upon the real estate. If at any time there should re- 
main a surplus of the income of the fund for instruction, after defrayin<? 
the expenses of instruction for the year, the same shall be added to the 
principal of said fund, and if at any time, from any adequate reason, or 
unavoidable necessity, instruction should be suspended, all income 
accruing durino* such suspension shall in like manner be added to the 
principal. 

"•The choice and discharge of teachers, and their salaries, the estab- 
lishment of rules for the management of the school, the care and repair 
of building's, and all oversight necessary to carrying out the designs of 
this institute, is committed to the trustees, in the exercise of their best 
judgment and discretion. 

*' The school shall be opened freely to youth in the county of Worces- 
ter, provided that only persons not under fourteen (14) years of age, 
or over twenty-one (21) years of age shall be admitted, and that from 
the applicants for its privileges, those only shall be received who pass 
satisfactorily such an examination as the trustees shall, by their rules, 
from time to time prescribe ; it being understood that the examination is 
to secure so much previous education as shall be necessarj'^ to enter with 
profit upon the course of study in this school ; and that the number of 
scholars shall be fixed, in their discretion, so as to be in proportion to 
the reasonable ability of the instructors emploj^ed. The trustees, how- 
ever, shall have authority so far to modify the above regulation in 
regard to age, as to admit, under circumstances of peculiar exigency, 
persons over twenty-one years of age to the benefits of the school, if it 
can be done without detriment to the general interests of the school ; 
and also in special cases, when, in their judgment, there is sufficient 
reason for doing so. with a like regard to the interests of the school, to 
admit scholars not belonging to Worcester county, and shall require of 
them, at their discretion, a moderate sum for tuition. And if, in future 
time, it shall be found by experience that confining the privileges of the 
school to males only would be more advantageous to the community, 
and to the interests of education, the trustees shall have the libert}^ to 
make such limitaton, for such periods as shall to them seem best 

•• Whereas, in making provision for the security of piety and good 
morals in connection with seminaries of learning, the statutes of the 
Commonwealth contain the following article. (Gen. Stat., Chap. 38, 
Sec. 10,) it is therefore enjoined upon the trustees to see that these pro- 
visions are. applied faithfully in this school, and that, while all secta- 
rianism and all control of one religious sect over another is strictly 
prohibited, the Bible, in the authorized version, shall be in daily use, 
and such devotional exercises as consist with a due sense of our de- 
pendence upon the Divine blessing. 



12 

" The board of trustees shall be organized by the election, from their 
own body, of a president, secretary, and treasurer, each to hold office 
for one year, or till a successor is elected, and each to discharge the 
duties common in such offices. 

'^The trustees shall meet at least orfce in each year for the transac- 
tion of business, and otherwise as often as the welfare of the institution 
may require. The time of the annual meeting and the manner of call- 
ing meetings of the trustees shall be fixed in the by-laws herein pro- 
vided for. 

" The trustees shall make and establish by-laws for the direction of 
the officers of the seminary, and for their guidance in the transactions 
necessary to carry out the intentions of this instrument. 

•' The expenses attending the meetings of the board shall be defrayed 
from the treasury, but no compensation shall, in any event, be given to 
members of the board for their services. 

'•The school shall be supplied with suitable apparatus, and a libi-ary 
containing boolis valuable for reference ; and it is my design to estab- 
lish a supplementary fund, the income of which shall be devoted to meet 
these and other wants, and contingencies that may arise, according to a 
method hereafter to be adopted. 

''The above named sum of One Hundred Thousand Dollars, 
which has already been given and paid over by me, for the above uses 
and purposes, will be conveyed and given over to the board of trustees 
herein established, after they are empowered by act of the Legislature 
to receive and hold the same, under the instructions and obligations of 
this instrument ; and as soon as the grounds and buildings necessary 
are ready for use. 

" And it is my desire to have it especially considered by the trustees, 
who are entrusted with the care of this institution, that its design is to 
give ample and thorough instruction in the several parts of education 
pursued, so that it may be an advantage to coming generations, a help 
to industrious and intelligent young persons, and an honor to the com- 
munity in which it is established; and that those who are trained in it 
may be useful citizens, not only well versed in the sciences and arts, 
but also persons of good morals, who will lead upright and honest 
lives in the sight of God and man." 

JOHX BOYNTON. [seal.] 

Signed and sealed in presence of David Whitcomb. 
May 13, 1865. 

At a meeting of the Corporation. June 3, 1865, the foregoing declara- 
tion having been submitted to the Corporation, and by them considered, 
it was unanimously 

Voted, '•' That the same be accepted and adopted as the terms upon which the 
donation of one hundred thousand dollars is made, and that a substantial com- 
pliance therewith be considered the condition upon which said fund is to be held 
and managed." 



13 

It was also Voted, " That the Trustees of the Worcester Co. Free Institute of 
Industrial Science would hereby record their high appreciation of the distinguished 
liberality of the donor of the fund of one hundred thousand dollars for the 
establishment and maintenance of said institute, and desire to express to him 
their belief that he has thereby laid the foundation of an institution which will 
do honor to his memory, and be a lasting benefit to the country and to coming 
generations." 



CHARTER OF THE CORPORATION. 



IN THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE. 

An Act to Incorporate the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial 

Science. 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court 
assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows : 

Section 1. Geoi-o-e F. Hoar, Seth Sweetser. their associates and suc- 
cessors, are hereby made a body corporate by the name of the Worces- 
ter County Free Institute of Industrial Science, for the pui'pose of 
establishing- and maintaining, in the city of Worcester, an institution to 
aid in the advancement, developement and practical application of 
science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, mercantile 
business, and such other kindred bi'anches of practical education as 
said corporation shall determine, with all the powers and privileges and 
subject to all the duties and liabilities set forth in all laws which now 
are or may hereafter be in force and applicable to such corporations. 
The mayor of the city of Woreestei-, for the time being, shall, ex-officio, 
be a member of said corporation, and one member shall be appointed 
by the Board of Education from time to time as a vacancy may occur ; 
and said corporation shall not consist of more than twelve members at 
any one time. 

Section 2. Said corporation shall have authority to accept and hold 
in fee simple or any less estate, any real or personal estate to an 
amount not exceeding four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to be 
devoted exclusively to the purposes aforesaid and in conformity with 
conditions made by any donor, not inconsistent with this act, expressed 
by him in writing and recorded in the records of said institution. 

Section 3. Said corporation may establish separate departments of 
scientific instruction and pursuit whenever it can be done without inter- 



14 

fering with the unity of purpose of said institution or the government 
and management of the same, may designate and distinguish such 
departments by specific names, and accept any moneys for the special 
advancement of said departments ; provided, that no moneys shall be 
applied to any uses not embraced within the general design of said 
institution as expressed in this act. 

House of Bepresentatives, May 6, 1865. 

Passed to be enacted, 

Alex. H. Bullock, Speaker. 
In Senate, May 9. 1865. 

Passed to be enacted, 

J. E. Field, President. 
May 9, 1865. 

Approved, 

JOHN A. ANDREW. 

Secretanfs Department, Boston, May 10, 1865. 

A true copy, 

Oliver Warner, 

Secretary of the Commonwealth. 



TRUSTEES. 



A By-Law required the number of Trustees should be twelve, and 
Hon. George F. Hoar, and Rev. Dr. S. Sweetser, of the Orthodox Con- 
gregational denomination in Worcester, Hon. Stephen Salisbury, Hon 
Ichabod Washburn, and David Whitcomb, Esq., Alpheus Harding, Jr., 
Esq.. of Athol, Rev. Dr. Alonzo Hill, a Unitarian clergyman in Worces- 
ter, and Rev. Hiram K. Pervear, a Baptist clergyman in Worcester, 
Hon. Emory Washburn, of Cambridge, elected by the Board of Educa- 
tion. Hon. Phinehas Ball, as Mayor of Worcester. Hon. D. Waldo 
Lincoln and Charles H. Morgan, Esq.. constituted the first Board of 
Trustees, organized by the choice of Stephen Salisbury, President, 
David Whitcomb, Treasurer, and Phinehas Ball, Secretary. On the 
expiration of the ofllclal term of Mayor Ball, Hon. D. Waldo Lincoln 
was elected Secretary, and Hon. James B. Blake, Mayor, was a mem- 
ber of the Board. 



LIBRARY AND APPARATUS FUND. 



A Second Communication was received from Mr. Botnton, 

ESTABLISHING A LIBRARY AND APPARATUS FUND, 

AS follows: 

Having", in the instrument in which I gave the sum of one hundred 
thousand dollars for the establishment of a School of Industrial 
Science, stated that it was ray desig-n, in addition to that fund, the 
uses and purposes of which were defined in said instrument, to establish 
another or a secondaiy fund, the conditions of which should afterwards 
be fixed, which said instrument was afterwards modified by extending 
the time originally provided for the completion of said buildings; and 
having, in another instrument signed by me on the 20th day of July. 
1865, authoi-ized and requested David Whitcomb. of Worcester, to re- 
ceive and hold all the interest and income of the first mentioned fund 
accruing after the firs't of May, in the year 1865, and from that time 
onward until the buildings to be provided for the use of said school, 
now called the '' Worcester County Free Institute of £ndustrial 
Science," should be ready for occupancy, I do now declare my pur- 
pose in regard to the said interest and income to be as follows, namel}' : 

That the entire amount, after the payment of such taxes as may have 
been assessed thereupon, and, after defraying such necessary expenses 
as may have occurred in the care and management of said fund, shall 
be paid to the trustees of said institute, who shall receive, hold, and 
safely invest the same, to be kept as a separate fund, the principal of 
which under no circumstances to be expended by them or their suc- 
cessors, but shall constitute a fund to be called the Library and Appa- 
ratus Fund, the income of which, under the direction of said trustees, 
shall be used for the purpose of purchasing books and apparatus for 
the said institute, repairing and supplying deficiences. as the condition 
of the librarj'- and apparatus may require, and so that by the judicious 
application of the said income from year to year, both the library and 
the apparatus may be enlarged, and the greatest advantage secured 
through them to the several departments of instruction in said insti- 
tute. While this is understood to be chief and the ever prominent use 
of the fund. I give to the trustees of said institute the liberty, when 
emergencies occur in whicii the interest of the institute would be pro- 



moted by using the said income in defrayinof contingent expenses not 
including therein the cost of instruction, general repairs of the build- 
ings, or improvements, to appropriate any part of the same according 
to their discretion. 

As in the growth and progress of the institute, the said fund may 
prove inadequate for the above specified necessities, it is my desire, if 
the trustees concur with me in my judgment, that efforts should be 
made by them to increase the amount of the fund, provided the ad- 
ditons made to it shall be subject to the above specified conditions, 
otherwise that the fund remain separate. 

Signed JOHN BOYNTON. [seal.] 

And Sealed this thu-d day of May, in the year 1866, in presence of E. 
H. Whitcomb. 





o/^cf 



7/>^>-rT_^_.^ 



y 



MECHANICAL DEPARTMENT. 



Letter of Gift and Instructions from Hon. Ichabod Washburn, 

TO Establish the Machine Shop and Working Mechanical 

Department of the Institute. 



To the Trustees of the Free School of Industrial Science : 

Gentlemen — I have lonsr been satisfied that a course of instruction 
mioj-ht be adopted in the education of apprentices to mechanical em- 
ployments, whereby moral and intellectual training might be united 
with the processes by which the arts of mechanism, as well as skill in 
the use and adaptation of tools and machinery are taught, so as to ele- 
vate our mechanics as a class in the scale of intelligence and influence, 
and add to their personal independence and happiness, while it renders 
them better and more useful citizens, and so more like our Divine Mas- 
ter, whose youth combined the conversations of the learned with the 
duties of a mechanic's son, and whose ideas and teachings now underlie 
the civilization of the world. 

It has seemed to me that the establishment of an Industrial Institute, 
such as it is proposed to found in Worcester, ofiers a favorable oppor- 
tunity for attempting to accomplish this purpose, by a measure which 
will be sure to be in harmony with the design and operations of such an 
institution. Impressed with this thought, I have concluded to propose 
to you a scheme, which, if it meets your approbation, may become a 
department of such institute, under the general charge and manage- 
ment of its ti-ustees and officers, with such proper limitations and sub- 
ject to such rules and conditions as may be proposed on ray part, and 
assented to on theirs, to be varied and modified hereafter as occasion 
may require, by the mutual consent and agreement of the trustees and 
myself. 

The scheme is substantially this, viz : — There shall be a machine shop 
of sufficient capacity to employ twenty or more apprentices, with a 
suitable number of practical teachers and workmen in the shop to in- 
struct such apprentices, and pi-ovided with all necessary steam power, 
engines, tools, apparatus, and niachinery of the most approved models 

3 



18 

and styles in use, to cany on the business of such machine shop in all 
its parts as a practical workin<i: establishment. There shall be a super- 
intendent of such shop, who shall be appointed and subject to be re- 
moved by the trustees, who shall be a man of good morals and christian 
character, having- a good English education, a skillful and experienced 
mechanic, well informed and capable of teaching others in the various 
parts and processes of practical mechanism usually applied or made 
use of in the machine shops of the country, who shall devote his time 
and attention to the management and business of the shop, purchasing 
st^ck. making contracts for the manufacture and sale of machines, and 
other work usually done in machine shops, subject to such rules as the 
trustees may prescribe, and having charge of the proper financial con- 
cerns of the shop, hiring necessary workmen, and discharging the same 
at his discretion, and who shall see that the apprentices are suitably 
taught in all the departments of practical mechanism, working of wood 
and metals, and use of tools, so as to make them so far as may be, 
skillful workmen, and fitted to carry on business for themselves, after 
they leave the shop at the expii-ation of their apprenticeship. 

He shall, moreover, have a care and oversight over the apprentices, 
such as a faithful master would exercise, to the end that they may cul- 
tivate habits of industry, good conduct, and attention to their studies, 
and observe all leasonable rules of discipline, and moral training. He 
shall receive a respectable salary, and shall be consulted at all reasona- 
ble times by the principal and trustees of the institute in respect to the 
instruction and management of said apprentices, as members of the 
institute. He shall have the charge of admitting or dismissing the ap- 
prentices; but no apprentice shall be admitted or dismissed without the 
approbation of the trustees, or such committee or officers of their num- 
ber, or of the institute, as they may prescribe. 

There may be admitted, as apprentices in said shop, not less than 
eight young men of good moral character, if so many offer to become 
such apprentices, who shall enter into a solemn and satisfactory obliga- 
tion to become such apprentices for the time prescribed, as hereafter 
provided, unless sooner discharged, and shall in all things conduct 
themselves agreeably to the rules and regulations of the shop, devoting 
their time and efforts to becoming educated, skillful, intelligent mechan- 
ics, and good and useful citizens. 

Should more young men apply for admission than the shop will ac- 
commodate at any time, those shall be selected, if otherwise properly 
qualified, who are inhabitants of che county of Worcester, least able 
to be supported bj"^ themselves, or their parents or friends, as it is my 
purpose, so far as the same can be consistently done, to make this a 
generous charity to poor and deserving young men. in aiding them to 
start in life. And to this end it is my intention and desire that there 
should be a careful and accurate account kept of the business of the 
shop from year to year, and if there shall have been a net profit made 
during such year, not including in the expense thereof the salary of the 



19 

superintendent, nor the interest upon the investment in buildings, in 
maeliinery. &c., nor the repairs upon the buildings or motive power of 
the establishment ; such net profit, together with so much of the income 
of the fund of fifty thousand dollars, hereinafter provided for, as may 
be necessary therefor, shall be apportioned by the trustees, in connec- 
tion with the superintendent, in supporting at least eight of the most 
meritorious and deserving of the apprentices for the time being, or if, 
in the judgment of the said trustees it shall be thought best to distrib- 
ute the amount necessary to tiie entire support of eight of said appren- 
tices among sixteen of their number, the same maj' be expended ac- 
cordingly, by supplying clothing, board, or other things of which they 
may be in need, tlie amount and the several proportions thereof to each 
to depend upon what may be needed of such net profits and income, 
and what, in the judgment of tlie trustees and superintendent, may be 
a fair and equitable distribution thereof, having regard to the condition 
of the apprentice, as well as his progress in his education, as it is my 
earnest desire, and an imperative condition of this, my gift, that the 
apprentices shall be as thoroughly instructed in the principles of 
science as may be reasonably accomplished during the period of their 
residence at the institute; and also that they shall acquire a practical 
knowledge of the use of tools and work, to such an extent as shall be 
of substantial advantage; and, as for the attainment of both these aims 
it is necessary that the time required for work in the shop shall not be 
encroached upon by attention to study, nor the time, on the other hand, 
required for study be injuriously restricted by attention to work, I give 
it as my judgment that the time of work should not in the average be 
more than four hours per day during the days of the regular sessions 
of the institute; it being understood that I do not bind the trustees to 
adhere to this exact amount or division of time, knowing the impossi- 
bility for providing for contingencies in the future, but that the times 
here indicated are to be taken as a general guide in carrying out my 
purposes, confiding the most favorable practical adjustment of the same 
to their experience and fidelity. 

And 1 do most strictly enjoin it upon the board of visitors hereafter 
constituted, as a chief and most important part of their duty, to see 
that there is no neglect in securing the two-fold purpose of this founda- 
tion simultaneousl3\ namely: education in the shop in the practical 
training therein given, and education in the school, by recitations, lec- 
tures, and whatever other modes may be therein adopted. In further- 
ance of the above stated object, the apprentices shall attend to work in 
the machine shop at such hours in the day as shall be required by the 
rules adopted or approved by the trustees, and it is expected of them to 
be industrious, and use their best endeavors to acquire knowledge and 
skill in the various kinds of work in which they are instructed. They 
shall also attend such classes in the institute as the principal and teach- 
ers thereof, together with the superintendent, shall judge best, at such 
time of the day as shall be regulated and prescribed by such superin- 



20 

tendent. principal and trustees, and while there shall study and apply 
themselves to such books and exercises as maj be prescribed for them, 
and shall faithfully endeavor to improve their time and opportunity in 
acquiring useful learning and knowledge; and it is to be understood 
that their hours in the shop and the school shall be so arranged as not 
to interfere unfavorably with their progress in either branch of their 
education. 

It shall be the duty of the trustees, from time to time, to adopt or ap- 
prove such rules, in accordance with the above provision, as they shall 
think proper in regard to the hours of work and school instruction in 
which the apprentices shall be employed, and as to attending the lec- 
tures in the institute, or sharing any other of its privileges and advan- 
tages, so as best to promote the advancement of those young men in 
acquiring a trade, and at the same time the elements of useful science 
and good learning. 

To carry out the foregoing plan, and to enable the trustees to sustain 
the measure hereafter in all its parts, I propose and offer to them to 
erect at my own expense, not to exceed tw^elve thousand dollars, a 
suitable machine shop in some suitable and convenient place near the 
institute, and to provide for the same a good and sufHcient steam engine 
of at least the power of ten horses, with other suitable tools, engines, 
apparatus and machinery necessary to fit such machine shop for use 
and occupation. I furthermore propose and offer to furnish for the first 
year's working cash capital, the sum of $5000; after that and during my 
lifetime the income and interest of fifty thousand dollars annuall5^ to 
be applied by the trustees in supporting and carrying on said machine 
shop in the manner herein before expressed, and paying the necessarj" 
expenses, and in supplying it with stock and materials for the first set 
of machines, of whatever kind or kinds it may be, which may be to be 
manufactured, supposing that thereafter the proceeds of the sales of 
any manufactured machines will at least supplj^ the means of purchas- 
ing stock and material for a second one, and so on as the business 
may progress, without charging the same to the general fund of the 
departmenc. I further propose and offer that I will, by my last will 
and testament, make provision whereby mj- estate, after my decease, 
shall pay to said trustees the sum of fifty thousand dollars, to be kept 
safely invested, separate and distinct from the general fund of the insti- 
tute, as a perpetual and entire fund for this department, the income of 
which shall be faithfull}^ applied in carrying out the plan and scheme 
hereinabove described, including provision for fund to be set aside and 
reserved to cover risk of fire, depreciation, and losses from any cause, 
and in an earnest and honest endeavor to give success to the same, ac- 
cording to the views and purposes which I have above expressed. 

1 further direct and require that out of the net annual proceeds of the 
income of said fund of fifty thousand dollars, and of the income of the 
machine shop, after meeting and defraying the current charges and ex- 
penses properly chargeable thereto, there shall be set apart the sum uf 



21 

ten thousand dollars, to be raised and accumulated as soon as nia}^ be 
consistently with the successful manao-ement of the institution, which 
shall be safely invested and retained as a reserve fund, the income of 
which may be expended, from time to time, in defrayin*^ the contingent 
charo-es and expenses of said shop, and the manao:ement of the same, 
and if anythin<J!' remains, to the w'eneral purposes of the institute; and 
the principal thereof may be borrowed and used by said trustees to 
meet extraordinary emero-encies, when from any cause the income of 
said fifty thousand dollars, and of the sliop, shall be inadequate to meet 
the necessary current expenses of said machine shop and the manat^e- 
ment thereof ; the sum so borrowed to be repaid and restored to said 
fund, so as to keep the same good, as soon as the condition of the fund 
and shop shall admit of so doing. And if, after carrying out these 
views, keeping the machine shop, engines, tools and appurtenances in 
good condition and repaii*, and rendering such aid to indigent young 
men as above contemphited, there shall be any surplus of income re- 
maining from said fund, at any time, the same may be applied, from 
time to time, to the general purposes of the institute, unless needed for 
the enlargement and extending of accommodation for the department 
of the shop. 

This ofier and proposition is made upon the express understanding 
that if. after a fair and reasonable experiment made, the trustees shall 
be satisfied, that the plan proposed cannot be successfully and advan- 
tageously carried out, and shall see fit to abandon the same, they may 
do so, and the entire fund of fifty thousand dollars, together with all the 
property connected with the machine shop, shall thereafter constitute a 
fund, the income of which shall be used by said trustees for the promo- 
tion of the main design of the institute, and more especially if, in their 
judgment, it will better subserve the interests of the institute, the in- 
come of said fund shall be appropriated to the department of mechan- 
ical engineering, or to some branch thereof, and the same shall be held 
in trust by them, and faithfully kept and used to can-y out my desire of 
extending the benefits of education as declared in this instrument, and 
subject to the inspection of the board of visitors hereinafter provided 
for. And, moreover, if the above change should, under any circum- 
stances, be carried into effect, it shall not be allowed to prevent, curtail, 
or in anywise interfere with my purpose to unite a generous charity 
with the disposition of these funds, but a portion of the incon)e shall 
always be given towards aiding indigent and deserving young mechan- 
ics in pursuing their studies, to the same extent and to the same num- 
ber of persons as before designated, with only such moditications as 
necessarily arise from this alteration in the use of these funds. 

But in order that my first design and plan mny not be abandoned 
without a fair and impartial trial, I further stipulate, if it shall appear 
to the board of visitors, hereinafter named, or if they shall have any 
cause or ground to believe or suspect, upon the abandoning of the 
above plan, that there has been any negligence, deficiency of interest 



22 

or unfaithfulness on the part of said trustees in the experiment, that 
the board of visitors shall proceed to investigate the course of man- 
agement of the trustees, to the end that they may fully understand the 
grounds and reasons which have led the trustees to declare the experi- 
ment unsuccessful and the further prosecution of it inexpedient ; and 
if they are not satistied with the management of the ti'ustees as faithful 
and impartial, tliey shall proceed forthwith to a settlement of the ques- 
tion, in the following manner, namely: — They shall cause a committee 
to be constituted by the choice of two individuals of their own selec- 
tion, and two selected by the trustees, which four persons shall elect a 
fifth, who shall be chairman of the committee; all these persons being 
men of known probity, intelligence and good standing, and said com- 
mittee shall examine into all the proceedings of the trustees in the 
premises, so as to render a fair and impartial judgment, and if they 
shall determine the views of the trustees to be correct, and their acts 
conformable to the just requirements of this instrument, then the board 
of visitors shall sanction the transfer of the above named funds as 
herein directed. 

But, if the said committee shall find that mismanagement, negligence 
or want of interest, or any defect in administration has led to the 
abandonment of my plan, they shall declare the said trustees to have 
forfeited the said funds, and the board of visitors shall see that the 
trustees do thereupon refund and pay over to my personal representa- 
tives, to be disposed of by ray will, or according to law, the principal 
fund aforesaid, and give up all claim to the real or personal property 
of the machine shop, unless the same shall be erected on the land of 
the trustees, in which case my heirs or personal representatives, or de- 
visees, as the case may be, may remove the buildings, engines and 
tools, and dispose of the same as a part of my estate. 

And to the end that there shall always be a body of men, distinct 
from said trustees, who shall be authorized to exercise a visitorial power 
over the administration of said fund, and the management of said me- 
chanical department, and expose any violation of, or departure from 
the provisions of this donation herein expressed, [ authorize and re- 
quest the persons hereinafter mentioned to act as visitors, and at all 
reasonable times, when they shall have cause to suspect and believe 
that said fund is or has been misapplied, or the machine shop and 
its departments neglected or impropei'ly conducted, the}' are to ex- 
amine into the same, and take such action as they may be advised is 
necessary to correct and remedy such misappropriation, neglect, or mis- 
management, viz : the Judge of Probate for the county of Worcester 
for the time being, the clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for said 
county for the time being, and the Chairman of the County Commis- 
sioners for said county for the time being, or whoever may fill the office 
corresponding to that now called by that name. And all reasona- 
ble and necessary expenses, occasioned by the exercise of the power 
aforesaid, shall be paid out of the income of the fund aforesaid; and 



23 

the trustees are to hold said shop and fund aforesaid, subject to the 
proper and reasonable exercise of said visitorial power by the persons 
aforesaid ; it beino- understood that said visitors are not to be empow- 
ered to overrule in any particular the discretion of the corporation in 
the control or application of the funds, or reofulation of the alTairs of the 
department, but they may institute proper judicial proceedings in the 
courts of the Commonwealth, in case they deem it necessary. 

The number of apprentices beyond the number herein prescribed, to 
be admitted into the shop, the age at which the same may be admitted, 
and the length of their apprenticeship, shall be prescribed from time to 
time b}'" the trustees, according to the condition and circumstances of 
the institute, and business of the machine shop. 

ICHABOD WASHBURN, [seal.] 

Signed and sealed in presence of RuFUS W. Sacket, J. Q. Adams, 
Geo. H. Kendall. 

Worcester, March 6, 18G6. 

At a meeting of the trustees at the above date, it was 

Resolved, That the trustees accept with jijratitudc the proposition now made, 
and ajjree to the change and modification of that originally made, as contained 
therein. 

Mr. Washburn's first offer, to establish a Machine Shop, was made 
Dec. 2, 1865, and was accepted by the Trustees in the following Reso- 
lutions : 

'^Resolved, That the trustees of tlie Worcester County Free Institute of 
Industrial Science have received with unmingled satisfaction the proposition, this 
day made to them by their respected associate, the Hon. Ichabod Washburn, in 
tlie communication which has been just read, to contribute the means of erect- 
ing and maintaining a Machine Shop, to be applied in the practical instruction of 
youth in the medianic arts, in connection with the branches of education taught 
in the institute. They gratefully accept the proposition of the donor, and pledge 
the trustees and their successors to carry out his intentions, as expressed in said 
communication, in good faith, so far as the same can reasonably be done. In 
accepting this, the trustees desire to express their hi^h appreciation of the dis- 
tinguished liberality and the wise benevolence and public spirit which prompted 
this contribution to the cause of popular education. They congratulate the 
people of the County of Worcester that an institution for the education and ele- 
vation of all classes has been planted in this county with the encouragement it 
offers to the young to a life of honorable industry ; that such an institution should 
have been founded from the fruits of such lives on the part of two of their fellow 
citizens, who have thereby reared a monument to their public spirit as lasting as 
the interests of learning and a common humanity." 



WORCESTER BUILDING FUND, 



Donations from Citizens, now or recently doing business in 

THE City of Worcester, for Buildings and 

Improvement of Grounds. 



Stephen Salisbury, $22,000 

James White, 1,700 

T. K. Earle & Co., 1,500 

David Whiteomb, 1,200 

Lucius W. Pond, 1,100 

P. L. Moeu, 1,100 
H. B. Olafiin of New York, 1,000 

Dr. John Green, 1,000 

Isaac Davis, 1,000 

Benj. Butman, 1,000 

Levi Liucohi, 1,000 

Ichabod Washburn, 1,000 

Chas. W. Smitli, 1,000 

Wni. A. Wheeler, 750 

E. A. Goodnow, 700 
Albert Curtis, 500 
T. W. Wellington, 500 
Ethan Allen, 500 
J. M. C. Arrasby, ' 500 
Ivers Phillips, 500 
L. & A. G. Coes, 500 
Geo. W. Gill, 500 
Geo. T. Rice, 500 

F. H. Kinnicutt. 500 
Alexander H. Bullock, 500 
C. W. Freeland & Co., 500 
Geo. Crompton, 500 
Sewell H. Bowker, 500 
H. H. Chamberlin, 500 
Joseph Pratt, 400 
Richard Ball, 400 
Henry Goddard, 300 
E. C. Cleveland & Co., 300 
Dr. George Chandler, 300 

E. G. Partridge, 300 
R. C. Taylor, 300 
< ;. B. Pratt, 250 
Merrick Bemis, 250 

F. W. Paine, 200 
L. M. Larned, 200 
Mo wry Lapliam, 200 
Stephen Salisbury, Jr., 200 
Bigelow & Barber, 200 
C. S. Messinger, 200 



Willard Brown, 

W. A. S. Smyth & Bro., 

Geo. M. Rice, 

Dr. Wm. Workman, 

Geo. F. Hoar, 

Geo. W. Russell, 

W. E. Rice, 

Barnard, Sumner & Co., 

Earle & Fuller, 

F. H. Dewey, 

W. McFarland, 

J. H. & G. M. Walker, 

Oakes Ames, Boston, 

Abram Firth, 

Sumner Pratt, 

Geo. W. Richardson, 

W. T. Merrifield, 

Geo. S. Howe, 

Thos. Smith & Co., 

Edwin Morse, 

Henry W. Miller, 

Towne & Harrington, 

Edward L. Davis, 

Dwight Foster, 

Dra])er Ruggles, 

Martin Lathe, 

Chas. Baker & Co., 

Albert Tolman, 

Geo. Phelps, 

Geo. T. Murdock, 

A. P. Richardson, 

Stephen Taft & Son, 

F. H. Inman, 

Richardson, Merriam & Co., 

Mrs. John Davis, 

D. S. Goddard, 

Timothy S. Stone, 

John Barnard, 

Geo. S. Barton, 

W. W. Rice, 

Jonas Heald, 

Augustus Flagg of Boston, 

Edwin Conant, 

W. H. Jourdan, 



200 

200 

200 

200 

200 

200 

200 

200 

150 

150 

150 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 



25 



Ira M. Barton, 
Adin Thayer, 
Warren Williams, 
Harrison Bliss, 
P. Emory Aldrich, 
John D. Baldwin, 
E. Harrington, 
John Gates, 
Samuel Woodward, 
Dr. Benj. Hey wood, 
Dr. T. H. Gage, 
Alonzo Whitcomb, 

C. H. Ballard, 

D. Waldo Lincoln, 
D. S. Messinger, 
AYm. H. Harrington, 
Calvin Foster, 

H. N. Tower, 

Carter Whitcomb, 

R. L. Hawes, 

Samuel Perry, 

C. Darlmg, 

S. C. & S. Winslow, 

Daniel Tainter, 

Samuel Parker, 

Rufus Carter, 

A. H. Wilder, 

R. Wesson, Jr., 

T. M. Rogers, 

J. P. Marble, 

Russ & Eddy, 

H. L. Stone, 

N. A. Lombard, 

A. H. Hapgood, 

James B. Blake, 

John Hammond, 

S. H. Colton, 

Benj. Goddard, 

Kendall & McClennan, 

Wm. Brown, 

Stephen Sawyer, 

Jenkins, Hamilton & Co., 

Phinehas Ball, 

Franklin Whipple, 

A. P. Ware. 

A. M. Howe, 

C. H. Morgan, 
Graton & Knight, 
J. S. Pinkham, 
John S. Baldwin, 
Edward Bemis, 

D. H. Eames, 
Walter Bigelow, 
J. M. Colbath, 
Simeon Clapp, 
Horace Sheldon, 
John Boy den, 
Appleton Walker, 
Geo. A. Kimball, 
Appleton Dadmun, 
Dr. Jos. Sargent, 
Henry Chapin, 
Earl Warner, 

W. C. Smith, 
J. J. Coburn, 
N. T. Bemis, 
J. P. Kettell, - 
L. Lewissou, 



100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

100 

75 

75 

75 

70 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

25 

25 

25 



A. Wyman, 
Benj. Walker, 
J. S. Hill, 
Gross & Strauss, 
F. Willard, 
A. S. Brown, 
S. Mawhinney, 
Levi Hardy, 
R. A. M. Johnson, 

D. A. Hawkins, Jr., 
Chas. Wood, 

F. Harrington, 
S. Taylor, Jr., 
Edwin Draper, 
H. Walbridge, 
J. W. Upham, 
C. A. Wheeler, 
Jerome Marble, 
Orrin Wood, 
Dr. Hobart, 
W. H. Dexter, 
Wm. L. Clark, 

E. A. Fawcett, 
Geo. R. Spurr, 
T. W. Hammond, 
W. Jones, 
Joseph Tenney, 
S. C. Andrews, 
T. L. Nelson, 
Joseph Boyden, 

E. A. Howard, 
Luther Ross, 
H. Forbes, 

C. A. Chase, 
L. Coburn, 
J. C. French, 
Rev. Alonzo Hill, 
Edwin Bynner, 

F. A. Clapp, 
E. W. Yaill, 
Hamilton Holt, 
Geo. R. Peckham, 
J. S. C. Knowlton, 
John D. Chollar, 
Lovell Baker, 
Scotto Berry, 
Joseph S. Perry, 

E. P. Marble, 
H. W. Eddy, 
Benj. Rugg, 
Samuel Clark, 
Chas. Stevens, 
Wm. Cross, 

D. H. Whittemore, 
Svlvanus Pratt, 
W. E. Starr, 

J. M. Earle, 
Theo. Brown, 
Geo. Sessions, 
John C. Newton, 
A. N. Currier, 

F. H. Rice, 
T. H. Reed, 
C. H. Gilbert, 
S. C. Earle, 
L. Houghton, 
W. S. Denny, 
L. Russell, 



P25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
20 
20 
20 
20 
20 
20 
20 
20 
10 
10 
10 
10 
10 
10 



26 



A. H. Hammond, 
W. G. Strong, 
D. H. O'Neil, 
A. W. Ward, 



10 
10 
10 



A. Stocking, 
F. P. Oliver, 
J. L. Morse, 



$10 
10 
10 



WORKMEN IN VARIOUS fIcTORIES AND SHOPS. 



O. Blood & Sons, Carriage Makers, 
E. C. Cleveland & Co., Machine Shop, 
W. A. S. Smvth & Bro., Boot Factory, 
T. K. Earle & Co., Card Factory, 
Washburn Iron Co., Rolling MUl, 
L. W. Pond, Machinists' Tools, 
Geo. Crompton, Loom Works, 
J. H. & G. M. Walker, Boot Factory, 
Bradley's Car Mfg. Co., 
Rice, Barton & Co., Calico Machinery, 
Bay State Shoe and Leather Co., 
Washburn & Moen Mfg. Co., Wire, &c.. 
Lathe & Morse, Machinists' Tools, 
Houghton & Heywood, Boot Factory, 
Daniel Tainter, Woolen Machinery,* 
Wm. A. Wheeler, Iron Foundry, 
AVorcester & Nashua R. R. Repair Shop, 
Timothy S. Stone & Co., Boot Factory, 
Ethan Allen, Factory of Fire Arms, 
Taylor & Farley, Organ &c. Factory, 



$241 

135 

129 

120 

100 

95 

88 

77 

75 

70 

60 

56 

55 

51 

45 

40 

37 

36 

28 

13 



Total donations, 



,111 




BOYNTON HALL 



WORCESTER COUNTY FREE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, 

Worcester, Mass. 



SALISBURY FUND FOR INSTRUCTION. 



This Fund of Sixty Thousand Dollars was made by Payments 
in connection with the two following letters. 



Worcester, Nov. 28, 1866. 

David Whitcomb, Esq., Treasurer of Worcester County Free Institute of 
Industrial Science. 

My Dear Sir : — I enclose my check for ten thousand dollars (10,000), 
which I olve to the Worcester Conntj^ Free Institute of Industrial 
Science, in trust, as a fund for the expenses of instruction in said institute. 
Said fund is to be separately, safely and productively invested and the 
income thereof is to be applied and expended — first, to maintain said 
fund at the value of ten thousand dollars, and second, to pay for in- 
struction provided by said institute, and third, any balance of income 
not needed for the first and second uses above indicated, may be ex- 
pended for books or apparatus in aid of said instruction. 

I am, very respectfully yours. 

STEPHEN SALISBURY. 



Worcester, Oct. 11, 1867. 

Hon. D. Waldo Lincoln, Secretary of the Worcester County Free Institute 
of Industrial Science. 

Dear Sir : — The change in the value of money has so impaired the 
efficiency of the fund, which John Boynton, Esq., most generously gave 
as the foundation of this Institute, that our citizens cannot have that con- 
fidence in the financial strength of the enterprise, which is needed to 
invite assistance and co-operation, and to insure success. To remove 
this difficulty, in some degree, and to encourage contributions from oth- 
ers, whicli will hereafter be desirable and necessary, I offer to the 
Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, fifty thousand 



28 

dollars, to be held in trust for the following uses, and for no other, viz : 
in trust to invest said sum safely and productively as a separate fund, 
and to expend in maintaining said fund at the full value of $50,000, so 
much of the income thereof as may be requisite, and to expend the resi- 
due of the income in payhig the expenses of the instruction, which this 
institute is established to provide. 

Very respectfully and truly yours, 

STEPHEN SALISBURY. 



FUNDS FOR APPARATUS, BOOKS, &C. 



In addition to $26,169. income from Mr. Boynton's donation of $100,000 
to the date of the opening of the school, and by his direction reserved 
as a fund to produce income for apparatus, &c., for the school, dona- 
tions have been received to be expended for apparatus, &c., from 

Estate of Dea. E. W. Fletcher, of Whitinsville, $500 

William Knowlton, Esq., of Upton, 1000 



MEMORIAL NOTICE OF JOHN BOYNTON, ESQ. 

Offered by the President and Adopted by the Trustees at 
the aunual meeting, held june 5, 1867. 



The death of John Boynton, Esq., the worthy and respected founder 
of the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, on the 
25th of March last, is an event which demands a brief memoir on our 
records. Mr. Boynton was born in Mason, N. H., on the 31st of May, 
1791. He worked as a farmer with his father until near the year 1821. 
Then he began, in New Ipswich, the manufacture and sale of tin ware, 
and in a short time he removed to Templeton, where he remained till 
he retired from active business in 1846. He was a representative of the 
town of Templeton in the State Legislature, but declined other public 
offices. After he disposed of his business in Templeton, he resided in 
Athol, where he was the first president of the Miller's Kiver Bank, in 
that town. He was twice married, and had no children, and was a 
widower at the time of his death. He died unexpectedly and suddenly, 
at Templeton, after an attack of inflammation on the lungs, occasioned 
by the exposure of a ride in a severe storm. 

He had little school instruction and no literary taste. He directed 
his powers less to intellectual culture than to the business by which he 
sought to acquire wealth. He was modest and reserved in his disposi- 
tion, and quiet and orderly in his habits, and he had a reputation for 
carefulness and moderate thrift rather than for large acquisitions or a 
philanthropic spirit. He was regarded as an honest, unambitious man, 
whose thoughts and care did not reach beyond his private affairs and 
his personal comforts. His love of concealment was injurious to his 
acts of individual kindness and his general popularity. This disposition 
was gratified in hiding in his own breast the benevolent enterprise to 
which he intended to devote the largest part of his property during his 
life. It was therefore a subject of general surprise and admiration 
when his reluctance to make display could no longer conceal the fact 
that this severe economist had acquired so large power of public benefi- 
cence, and that he had generously parted with it during his life, to pro- 
vide for young men the advantages of scientific and skillful training in 



30 

mechanic arts, and in other departments of active business wliich he 
himself had not enjoyed, and he had not been thoug-ht capable of ap- 
preciating. It is unnecessary to repeat here that he was most liberal 
and accommodating in adopting modipcations of his original instruc- 
tions, by which the objects of this institute could be more fully pre- 
sented. 

He made no provision and no suggestion for his personal advantage 
or distinction, or for the honor of his name. No grain of sellishness 
tarnished the beauty of his noble benefaction. After giving to his rela- 
tives such donations as he judged proper and sufficient, he transferred 
to this Institute one hundred thousand dollars, carefully invested, for 
the purposes set forth in his letter of gift. And he reserved for himself 
a small amount of property, sufficient for his frugal habits and simple 
tastes in the residue of his life. Several years ago he gave, in his pe- 
culiar, quiet manner, ten thousand dollars for public schools in Mason, 
N. H., where he was born. 

While he lived it was proper to respect his wishes as to any personal 
distinction in connection with his gifts. ^NTow that the Providence of 
God has withdrawn him from participation in the labors and feelings 
of this life, these trustees have a duty to preserve his memory for honor 
and gratitude. The following resolution is therefore adopted : 

Resolved, That the principal building for instruction of the Worcester County 
Free Institute of Industrial Science shall be designated and called Boynton 
Hall, to perpetuate the honored name of the founder of the institute, and to en- 
large the good influences of his wise and liberal benefaction. 



INAUGURATION AND DEDICATION. 



On the 11th day of November, A. D. 1868, at 10 A. M., the Trustees 
of the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, their in- 
vited ^ests, the subscribers to the building fund and other friends 
of the Institute, ladies and g'entlemen, assembled, in the face of a 
drivino^ storm, for inauguration and dedication services atBoyntonHall, 
in Worcester, in sufficient numbers to fill the chapel. The exercises 
were commenced by excellent music, volunteered by a quartett choir, 
under the direction of Mr. B. D. Allen. 

Hon. D. Waldo Lincoln, Chairman of the Building Committee of the 
Trustees, made the following report ; 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees: 

On the second day of November, 1866, a little more than 
two years ago, your committee, ct)nsisting of Messrs. 
Lincoln, Whitcomb, Hoar, and Morgan, was appointed, 
with instructions to advertise for proposals, to make the 
necessary contracts, and to superintend the erection of this 
building. Its location, upon this beautiful and commanding 
eminence, embracing an area of about eight acres, [the 
generous gift of our president] , had been previously deter- 
mined by the trustees. The value of this donation cannot 
be estimated at a less sum than $10,000. The grading ot 
the lot had also been accomplished, and the serpentine road 
up and around the hill has been constructed, in conformity 
with the plan of Mr. Calvert Yaux, of New York, an ac- 
complished architect and landscape gardener, and at a cost, 
including the excavation of the cellar, of $8000. Fifteen 
thousand yards of earth were removed in the heavy grading 
that was required to prepare a level plateau of sufficient 
area to accommodate the proposed buildings. 



32 

Objection has sometimes been made to the character and 
direction of the main approach to the buildings, but in no 
other manner could the road have been formed. To reach 
the summit of the hill from Boynton street, it is necessary 
to overcome an elevation of sixty feet, and it is only by 
artificially lengthening the line of the road, that an easy and 
practicable grade could be obtained. The general plan, the 
style and materials of the building, and its position with 
reference to the machine shop of Mr. Washburn, had also 
been decided by the trustees. 

The building fund, amounting, with premiums, accumu- 
lated interest, and all contributions to the present time, to 
the sum of $70,987, was placed at our disposal. This sum 
has been prmcipally raised from the voluntary contributions 
of citizens of Worcester, stimulated largely by the untiring 
and persuasive offorts of our former townsman, Abram 
Firth, Esq. One individual, whose name I need not men- 
tion in this presence,* contributed the princely donation of 
$22,000 to the building fund alone, in addition to the land 
upon which these buildings stand, and the sum of $60,000 
as an endowment fund for the support of the institution. 
Fifteen hundred and fifty-one dollars were contributed by 
the workmen in twenty of our shops and factories — a dona- 
tion doubly welcome, as furnishing evidence of their appre- 
ciation of an enterprise, intended to promote their special 
interests, and to give character and dignity to their calling. 
Few indeed, were those, having an interest in the honor 
and prosperity of our city, who withheld the word of en- 
couragement, or declined to render more substantial aid to 
the undertaking. Sixteen hundred dollars were contribu- 
ted to this fund by non-residents, of which we received, 
from our former townsmen, H. B. Claflin, Esq., of New 
York, $1000; and from Charles W. Freeland, Esq., of 
Boston, $500; and also $100 from Hon. Oakes Ames, 
largely interested in business at Worcester. From the ex- 



*Hon. S. Salisbury. 



33 

ecutors of Dea. Ezra Fletcher, of Northbridge, we received 
$500, and now, within a few da3''s, a most timely and liberal 
gift of $1000 from Wm. Knowlton, Esq., of Upton, which 
have been appropriated to the fund for apparatus. 

The contract for the building was awarded to Messrs. 
Horatio N. Tower and Tilley Raymond of this city, for the 
sum of $55,500. The whole masonry of the building was 
underlet by the contractors, to Mr. Lilley of Providence. 
The style of the front and end walls of the building was 
changed, after the contract was made, from mixed to square 
rubble, at an extra cost of $2000, to meet which, a special 
contribution of $1380 was made by a few liberal and public 
spirited gentlemen. 

The external walls are made of the common granite from 
Millstone hill, than which it would be difficult to find a 
more beautiful and effective material for such use ; its dark 
and varieofated colors forminsf an ao^reeable contrast w^ith 
the lighter shades of the Uxbridge granite, of which the 
trimminsrs are made. The buildins: is one hundred and 
forty-six feet long by sixty-one feet wide ; the tower is 
eighty-five feet high. A full description of the building 
has been recently given in the public papers, and I there- 
fore omit it here. 

For the various additions and alterations, which it was 
found necessary to make in the building during the pro- 
gress of the work, the contractors received the inconsidera- 
ble sum of six hundred dollars. The contract was executed 
with commendable promptness, and the building delivered 
to the committee at the specified time, for the sum, includ- 
ing extras, of $56,100. The additional cost of the square 
rubble masonry was $2000. Gas pipes have been put in by 
Messrs. Colvin & Starkey, of Boston, at a cost of $317 22. 
The plumbing was done by Mr. N. G. Tucker, of this city, 
for $178 15. Mr. J. J. Walworth, of Boston, furnished 
and set the steam pipes for $1900 ; and Messrs. Stewart & 
Dillon, also- of Boston, the boiler for $840. Messrs. Earle 
& Fuller, architects, received by agreement $1600 for their 

5 



34 

plans and services. The insurance of the building cost 
$1084. 

The total cost of the building, grading of the grounds, 
equipment and furniture, as we deliver them into your 
hands to-day, is $75,343 68. The very large expenditures 
required for the equipment and furniture of the building 
have compelled the committee to overdraw their account 
with the treasurer, to the amount of $3,924 33. Apparatus 
for the chemical and drawing departments will be required 
for immediate use that will cost an additional sum of from 
three to four thousand dollars. 

The committee take pleasure in giving credit to Messrs. 
Earle & Fuller, the architects, and to Messrs. Tower & 
Eaymond, and their sub-contractors and workmen, for the 
skill, promptness, and general fidelity with which their 
work and contracts have been executed. And, especially, 
would we here acknowledo^e the oblio^ations which the com- 
mittee and the trustees owe to Mr. James White, of this city, 
who, as our agent, has assumed almost the entire oversight 
and responsibility of the work, and has discharged his duty 
with a degree of skill, energy and fidelity which could not 
have been exceeded. If our task has been accomplished to 
your satisfaction, to him and not to us belongs the credit. 
We surrender to you. Mi*. President and gentlemen, a taste- 
ful and substantial edifice, alike creditable to him who has 
designed, and to those who have executed it, and which will 
go far to remove the reproach which has sometimes been 
cast upon our city, for the ordinary character of its public 
buildings. For its commanding and admirable location, for 
the beauty of its architectural design, for the general ex- 
cellence of its workmanship and finish, for its adaptation to 
the uses for which it is designed, and for the economy of 
its construction, we believe it will rank among the model 
public buildings of the commonwealth. 

Much yet remains to be done to furnish the building with 
the necessary books and apparatus, to build the fences, to 
finish and ornament tlie grounds, and to bring the surround- 



35 

ings iu more perfect harmony with the building. We have 
no fear that a generous and appreciative community will per- 
mit such an institution to want any means essential to its 
perfect development. In behalf of the building committee, 
and by their direction, I now, Mr. President, surrender the 
keys and custody of the building into your hands. 

The President, Mr. Salisbury, responded as follows : 

Mr» Chairman and Gentlemen of the Building Committee : 

In behalf of the trustees of this institute I receive from 
your hands the possession of this beautiful and commodious 
edifice, which has been properly called Boynton Hall, in 
honor of the founder of the institute, and it is my first duty 
to express to you the obligation, which all the friends of 
the institute will acknowledge, for the care and good judg- 
ment which, in the pressure of official and private occupa- 
tions, you have freely devoted to the arrangement and over- 
sight of the building. I cordially assent to your commenda- 
tions of those who have been employed in the construc- 
tion, and, at the risk of repetition, I think it my duty to 
re-echo the thanks which you have expressed. 

Ladies and gentlemen, contributors to the building fund 
and friends of intelligent industry, this simple and signifi- 
cant ceremony leads me to a wide field, from which, as I 
cannot pass by it, I will gather a few of the objects which you 
will expect me to present. The first emotion that should 
be excited is gratitude, and I will endeavor to express this, 
with all possible brevity, so that the important topics of the 
condition, the objects and the necessities of the school may 
be presented by more able and acceptable advocates. You 
Avill agree with me that high commendation is due to the 
architects, Messrs. Stephen C. Earle and James E. Fuller, 
for their taste and skill in the graceful exterior, the firm 
structure, and the commodious arrangements of the plan 
and specifications of the building. Thanks and no ordinary 
praise are also due to the contractors, Messrs. Horatio N. 



36 

Tower and Tilley Raymond, for their good judgment and 
fidelity in the construction of the building in a manner sat- 
isfiictory to the trustees, and not without moderate profit to 
themselves. Messrs. A. K. Lilley and G. H. Macomber, 
of Providence, R. I., the stone masons, should be honora- 
bly mentioned for their taste in combining so much of 
beauty with a rough exterior. 

Mr. James White, of Worcester, one of the largest and 
most generous contributors to the building fund, deserves 
grateful and commendatory recognition for his greater gene- 
rosity in consenting to oversee the construction, and for the 
faithfulness and discretion with which he has co-operated 
with the builders in the course of the work, and for volun- 
tarily adding his most valuable labor. I must also express 
the grateful obligation of the friends of the institute to the 
contributors to the building fund, all now or recently citi- 
zens of Worcester, who, according to the conditions pre- 
scribed by Mr. Boynton for its location here, made up an 
aggregate gift of $61,111, from two hundred and thirty-one 
individual names, and from the collections of twenty shops 
and factories. This is a noble list for the generosity of 
many of the givers, for the variety of interests and occupa- 
tions, and for the influence and character which are a 
pledge for the support of our enterprise. This building 
fund in the care of the treasurer, David Whitcomb, Esq., 
has been increased by income to $70,987. The balance of 
this fund not expended for the building and available for 
furniture and apparatus, will fall short of the necessary 
amount by about $5000. You will not pardon me if I 
should omit the name which stands at the top and the bot- 
tom of this roll of honor and gratitude, John Boynton, 
Esq., of Templeton, a manufacturer of tin ware, who, 
while in health, and with a good prospect of continued life, 
on May 1, 1865, gave, as a fund for instruction in the histi- 
tute, one hundred thousand dollars, consisting in securities 
of undoubted value, and he reserved for the support of the 
remainder of his life a few thousand dollars, no more than 



37 

was necessary for his economical habits. The instructions 
which accompanied his gift, state that the "aim of this 
school shall ever be the instruction of youth in the branches 
of education not usually taught in the public schools, essen- 
tial and best adapted to train the young for practical life, 
especially those intending to be mechanics, or manufac- 
turers, or farmers." 

He also directs that the school should be free to all resi- 
dents of Worcester county, and that scholars from abroad 
should be received at a moderate tuition. This cheapness 
was the dictate of his own generosity, and it was not in- 
tended to provide exclusively or chiefly for a poorer class 
of citizens. In all our colleges, even in those of most ex- 
pensive tuition, there is a larger amount of instruction and 
accommodation furnished gratuitously than that which is 
paid for. Like our town schools, the foundations of the 
wisdom of our people, this institute is designed to gather in 
harmonious association, the rich and the poor, so that mu- 
tual respect may be promoted at the outset of life. 

By Mr. Boynton's direction the income of his gift of 
$100,000, until the opening of the school, is reserved as a 
fund, the interest of which must be devoted to the purchase 
of apparatus for the school. This apparatus fund now 
amounts to $26,169. Mr. Boynton was not permitted to 
live to see his beneficent design carried into efi'ect. He 
died suddenly of pneumonia, on the 25th of March, 1867. 
A bequest of $500 from the estate of Deacon E. W. Fletch- 
er, of Whitinsville, and a donation of $1000 from William 
Knowlton, Esq., of Upton, and the balance above stated, 
are the only monies now available for the purchase of furni- 
ture and apparatus indispensable for the school. We have 
confidence that the liberality which has carried us so far 
will not fail to sustain us now. The instruction fund, con- 
sistins: of Mr. Bovnton's o^ift and other donations and their 
income, amounts to $164,674. 

By this concurrence of wealth and labor and wise ar- 
rangements, a school for scientific instruction was estab- 



38 

lished which would be favorably compared in its outfit with 
other schools of that kind in our country. But the expand- 
ing cup of our blessings was not yet full. The yisitor, who 
approaches Boy n ton Hall, to-day, will see, at the distance 
of fifty feet from the north side of the hall, another building 
of pressed bricks, one hundred feet in length and three 
stories in height, graceful in form and proportions, but so 
diflerent from Boynton Hall as to indicate a difierent origin 
and use. It is proper to mention that Messrs. Elbridge 
Boy den & Son were the architects. This fine building, 
with its long forge shop and engine room, also of brick, and 
its steam engine and complete machinery for mechanical 
business, is the gift of Hon. Ichabod Washburn, for a ma- 
chine shop, in which the pupils of the school may be taught 
the use of tools and the management of machinery, under 
skillful mechanics, for whose compensation, and for the aid 
of some of the pupils, Mr. Washburn has established a 
fund. Thus the theoretical and the practical, the mathe- 
matics of the blackboard and the mathematics of the bench 
and the anvil are brought into close association. Mr. 
Washburn may contemplate with just satisfaction the vast 
and useful business which he has established by his own 
skill, labor and perseverance ; but he may look forward 
with higher anticipations to the profits and the blessings 
which coming generations will enjoy from his wise benevo- 
lence. 

Our thank offerings are not yet completed. We cannot, 
in this hour, forget the source from which all good counsels 
and all just works do proceed. "Except the Lord build 
the house, they labor in vain that build it ; except the Lord 
keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." 

I therefore ask you to give your attention, while Rev. 
Dr. Sweetser shall lead our thoughts in addressing the 
throne of Divine gi-ace in behalf of our enterprise. 

Rev. Dr. Sweetser offered a solemn and earnest prayer of dedication, 



^ 




39 

which was followed by appropriate vocal music by the choir. Then 
Mr. Salisbury again addressed the audience. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — Two questions will naturally 
come up for consideration to-day, and they should receive 
attention in our deliberations. First, what is the need of 
establishing this school? and, second, how can its object 
be best accomplished ? I will hastily allude to the untena- 
ble grounds on which scientific schools have been recom- 
mended. There is at this time a movement, it cannot be 
called a discussion, among some literary men in this coun- 
try and in Europe, to show that training in the ancient 
classics, the system which produced Lord Bacon and John 
Locke among the philosophers, and John Milton and Joseph 
Addison among the poets, and all the other names which 
have the highest and most enduring places among the mas- 
ters of modern thought, has been made weary, stale and 
unprofitable by the progress of our day. It is unnecessary 
to argue against an assumption that is simply false. Class- 
ical learning cannot be held responsible for the absurdities 
of Dr. Pangloss, Dominie Sampson, and other pedants, 
while it may righfully boast of the useful and inexhaustible 
resources of our own Everett and of many others of our 
best scholars. It is sometimes said that our colleges teach 
too much Latin and Greek. A slight examination of a 
majority of the college graduates for the last forty years 
will dismiss this apprehension. Some currency has been 
given to these notions by a bad system of teaching the 
classical languages. The scholar is often taught the anato- 
my of the language, without being inoculated with its 
living spirit. Many will sympathize with the sad words of 
Lord Byron in his beautiful tribute to the poet Horace : 

•• I abhorred 
Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake 
The drilled, dull lesson, forced down word by word 
In my repu-i'nant youth, with pleasure to record 
Aught that recalls the daily drug, that turned 
My sickening memory — 



40 

Then farewell Horace, whom I hated so 
Not for thy faults, but mine, it is a curse 

To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, 
To comprehend but never love thy verse." 

So far as there is any unpopularity or any general disuse 
of classical learning, they are produced by the same cause 
that has put an end to apprenticeships and made so many 
superficial mechanics — the impatience of the age and the love 
of quick results. But there is no decay of classical learn- 
ing nor of mechanical science and skill. There are scholars 
now living at whose feet the old critics, the Scalligers and 
the Porsons, might sit with admiring docility ; and we have 
mechanics in our city who possess secrets of their art which 
the Watts and the Perkins and other honored mechanics of 
former days did not learn. 

Much is said in these days of self-taught men, as a class 
contrasted with collegians. As if a man could attain any 
perfection in knowledge without his own strong efforts. A 
college diploma, like a good coat, may be an advantage, but 
it will not make a man. With all the aids that Edward 
Everett had, I venture to assert that he was as laborious in 
his self-teaching as John Bunyan or Hugh Miller, or any 
other man who cultivated the gifts of God with little as- 
sistance from his fellows. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that John Bunyan was deeply learned in the noblest 
and best of the classics, the Sacred Scriptures. Permit me 
to add one more to the fallacies which commonly travel to- 
gether. The comparison of book learning with practical 
knowledge is a frequent and popular topic of declamation, 
but we all know that book learning, which deserves the 
name, is only the record of the thoughts and actions of men, 
by which that which may be transient and forgotten, is pre- 
served. 

The necessity for scientific schools arises from none of 
these causes, and the man of action is no antagonist, but a 
co-worker with the student of books- But the claims of 
active life are too urgent to permit full and varied courses 



41 

of study. What is learned must be directly applied. The 
recent exhibition of the manufactures of the world in 
France, is, perhaps, the best school of mechanical science 
that could be devised, and some of our neighbors were re- 
spected teachers and apt scholars there. The first effect of 
that exhibition was a sort of self examination among the 
mechanics of the several countries, and it was found that 
in general mechanical education, the German, the French, 
and the English workmen stand on a descending grade. If 
we are little better than the English, we may thank our 
common schools for the advantage. In a very wise speech 
recently made by Earl Carnavon before the National Asso- 
ciation for the Promotion of Social Science, at Birmingham, 
he gracefully hints at the necessity of improvements in 
technical education among his countrymen, with delicate 
care not to disturb their self-satisfaction, and thus concludes 
this topic: "I will only say of all technical education, 
whether of the higher grades of professional life or of those 
lower paths with which the manual labor of the individual 
artizan is concerned, that its basis must be laid in sound 
principles of elementary instruction, and that the later 
teaching is dependent on the earlier." 

I understand it is the object of this institute to lay such 
a foundation and to give such aid in the superstructure as a 
three years course may afford. There is no intention and 
no desire to establish here a rival, or a substitute for the 
colleges. This school will not attempt to turn out in this 
short period an Arkwright, a Stephenson, or a Fulton, but 
it may give facilities and helps which these great mechanics 
did not possess. I thought it my duty to give some brief 
hints of our objects, imperfect as they are. I am now hap- 
py to present to you those who can speak on these topics 
with the certainty of wise experience. 



42 

The President then introduced Prof. Chester S. Lyman, of the Shef- 
field Scientific School of Yale College, who made the following ad- 
dress : 



Mr. President^ Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I come here to-day with kindly greetings to this new in- 
stitution from the one which I have the honor to represent, 
as well as with cordial congratulations to this flourishing 
city, on the crowning of one of its heights with so appropri- 
ate a memorial of the intelligence and public spirit of its 
citizens. 

For I cannot but recognize in every new institution of 
learning, wisely founded, a new guaranty of enlightened 
social progress — a new element in the power of the state. 
The old aphorism, Ivtiowledge is Power, though too trite, 
almost, for utterance, is yet so emphatically true, that I can 
not well keep it out of mind, when I consider the extent 
to which the power of nations, not less than of individuals — 
the strength and glory of our civilization — rest ultimately 
on man's faculty of knowing — his ability to analyze and 
comprehend his surroundings, and use the knowledge so 
gained for the furtherance of his ends. 

All knowledge, objective and subjective, all forms and 
degrees of it, all sciences and arts, all professions and 
pursuits, all the workings and gatherings, in short, of man's 
faculty of cognition, I recognize as contributing, directly 
or indirectly, under the light and guidance of Christianity, 
to the growth and power of our modern civilization. In 
every element of that civilization, however simple, I recog- 
nize the genius, the science, the culture of all ages and 
all climes. 

To illustrate: — I take up that familiar trifle, a common 
almanac, to find the time of sunrise, or low tide, or full 
moon, lu that mere crumb of information — two or three 
figures, only, express it — I recognize a joint contribution 
from the rich treasures of a dozen sciences — Astronomy, 
Mathematics, Optics, Mechanics, and many more — aided 



43 

by the highest achievements of constructive art, as seen in 
the telescope, the circle, and the clock of the observatory, 
and in the power press and the steam engine of the print- 
ing office. I recognize in it, in fact, a fruit of the grand 
life-work of all the Galileos, and Keplers, and Newtons, 
and La Places, and Herschels, and other like impersonations 
of genius and learning, from the earliest ages down ; all 
this, and more, in that one little item from the almanac — 
all this, just to tell the plow-boy, it may be, when to be 
afield in the morning, or the clam-digger, when to venture 
out for his bivalves, or the lovers, when to take their moon- 
light walk. 

And so, in instances numberless. In every article we 
wear, in every comfort and luxury we enjoy, in the mechan- 
ism of our mills, in the processes of our arts, in our col- 
lections, museums, and libraries, in all that makes our 
civilization what it is, we discern with equal, or still greater 
clearness the genius and learning and skill of generations 
of thinkers and whole armies of workers. 

This vital connection of knowledge with civilization and 
the public weal, renders the system of institutions by 
which that knowledge is to be fostered and diffused a matter 
of paramount importance in every enlightened country. 

Our own system of educational institutions — from the 
common school upward, though, confessedly, far from per- 
fect, is yet one that, tested by its fruits, may justly be to 
us an occasion of congratulation over the past, of pride in 
the present, and of hope for the future. Step by step, it 
has well kept pace with the rapid growth of the nation, and 
shown itself ever flexible to the changing circumstances and 
exigencies of the times. 

In the institution inaugurated here to-day, I recognize a 
notable step onward in that system. I see in it, not simply 
a new institution, but for this country, in some important 
respects, a new class of institutions — one proposing to itself 
a work quite different from that of the exisiting schools and 
colleges. It is this novelty and uniqueness of its functions 



44 

and objects that clothes it with special interest and im- 
portance. It is, in truth, a characteristic outgrowth of the 
times. The progress of the country in wealth, the growth 
of the sciences, the increasing importance of the arts, 
all seem to render as indispensable in this country, as in the 
older countries of Europe, a class of institutions whose 
chief function it shall be, to promote the efficiency of the 
various branches of human industry by the suitable train- 
ing and equipment of those who practice them ; especially, 
those branches which depend, more or less directly, on the 
principles of the mathematical and physical sciences. The 
mechanic arts — which underlie, in a measure, all other arts, 
and whose rapid progress is one of the wonders of the 
age — need for their further improvement, and best efficiency, 
all the aid they can get, both from the sciences to which 
they are specially related, and from the right training of 
the industrial classes. 

In Europe, this stage of progress was reached, and this 
necessity felt, long ago, and, in consequence, schools of in- 
dustrial science have long been maintained in France, Ger- 
many, and elsewhere on the continent, and have contributed 
largely — as the records of the Great Exhibitions show — to 
the success of industry, and so, to the wealth and power 
of the nations that have fostered them. 

Such institutions — schools for teaching the scientific prin- 
ciples that underlie and vitalize the arts — are a prime ne- 
cessity with every civilized people. Agriculture, manufac- 
tures, and commerce, with their associated arts, are the great 
recognized sources of national wealth and power. And 
these are so vitally dependent for success, in their higher 
stages of development, on the careful concentration to their 
support of all available auxiliaries, that the nation which 
does not recognize this fact, but blindly persists in clinging 
to the old and ignoring the new, will be forced, sooner or 
later, to see and lament its error, by foiling to compete suc- 
cessfully with its neighbors in the marts of commerce. 

The mortification of Great Britain at the unfavorable 



45 

comparisou, in the first Crystal Palace, of many of her 
most cherished products with those of other countries, may 
afford a profitable lesson to ourselves, as well as to her; 
teaching us that no means of improvement are to be neg- 
lected, no training overlooked, no scientific aid discarded, 
if we would attain the fullest measure of success, and be 
able to compete with other nations for the great prize of 
social and national pre-eminence. 

That lesson we are beginning to take to heart. The call 
for schools of applied science, so loud and earnest, of late 
years, in Great Britain, has begun to be heard here also. 
This is not the same call, it should be observed, as that 
which demands, both there and here, a larger attention to the 
sciences, and less to the dead languages, in our systems of 
liberal education. But both calls agree in this ; they are 
calls for more science, and both are strongly backed by the 
earnest convictions of a large and growing body of think- 
ers, abroad and at home, as well as by the general spirit 
of the age. 

This is neither the place, nor the occasion, for a discus- 
sion of the relative positions to be assigned respectively to 
the ancient classics and to the sciences, in our college 
courses. Suffice it to say, that with all due respect for the 
classics — yea, even with a very high regard for them, and 
for the admirable culture which classical training imparts, 
and without intending to disparage in the least the kindly 
nurture of my own honored Alma Mater, I yet join unhesi- 
tatingly in the call for more science — more for culture, 
more for its practical uses. 

And yet, I join in no rash, undiscriminating cry. I preach 
no crusade against classical colleges. Nor would I have 
them, if I could, transformed into schools of phyisical sci- 
ence — much less, into schools of arts and trades. Let the 
classical curriculum, in our leading seats of learning, remain 
essentially what it is — nay, rather, let it be extended and im- 
proved, if there are those that wish it. The polished 
tongues of Greece and Rome are taught in our colleges 



46 

none too thoroughly, even now, for those that desire a classi- 
cal training, and, especially, for those that are to make 
literature a profession. There ought always to be institu- 
tions among us, or departments of institutions, where not 
only these languages, but others, also, that are either ven- 
erable for their antiquity, or of special ethnographic im- 
portance, such as the Hebrew, the Sanscrit, the Arabic, 
the Chinese, et cetera., shall be thoroughly and philosophi- 
cally taught, by the best masters of each. 

Let the classics, then, remain. The old curriculum will 
always attract a sufficient corps of earnest and appreciative 
students. 

But let not that curriculum be made obligatory on all. I 
would never goad a reluctant boy, constitutionally abhorrent 
of Latin, but all enthusiasm over a problem in algebra, or 
perchance over a fossil shell, or a whittled model of a steam 
engine — I would never goad such a boy, against nature, 
through a field, to him, all thorns and briars, and wholly un- 
promising of fruit ; just as I would not force a lad of litera- 
ry turn — a born linguist, but never able to fathom the 
multiplication table — to scale the rugged precipices of alge- 
bra, or plunge into the, to him, abysmal Tartarus of the 
calculus. In either case, it were time and toil misspent — 
genius wasted — nature outraged. 

Let there be, then, in our larger institutions, besides the 
classical course — or in some of the minor ones, in lieu of 
it, perhaps — a distinct curriculum, in which the dead lan- 
guages shall be replaced by the living, and in which a larger 
part of the culture than is usual shall come from training in 
the sciences. 

Such a curriculum is demanded, alike, by the high posi- 
tion of the sciences themselves ; by their fitness to discipine 
the faculties and powers of the mind ; by their wealth 
of rational enjoyment for those that master them ; as well 
as by their indispensableness to the perfection of the indus- 
trial arts, and, consequently, to the highest promotion of 
our material prosperity. To this demand some of our in- 



47 

stitutions have already responded ; while others had, in a 
measure, anticipated it, by steps taken in the same direc- 
tion long ago. Yale and Harvard, at least, not to mention 
others, have, according to the means at their command, 
kept well up with the times. And few of our colleges, I 
think, are justly chargeable with designedly ignoring the 
claims of the physical sciences, or with being too intensely 
classical; though some, doubtless, in their poverty of funds, 
may have failed to keep even step, either with the march of 
the times or with the actual convictions of their own fac- 
ulties and trustees. 

But it is not as an element of general culture, merely, 
that the times call for more science. The special student of 
the sciences must have facilities for pursuing them, if he 
will, to their extremest limits ; and the arts and industries, 
also, must have the aid which their applications afford. 

These ends are too important either to be ignored, or to 
be met by the modicum of science embraced in any ordi- 
nary college course. Special schools of science afford the 
only means by which these ends can be attained. Such 
schools, mostly through private bounty, have been attached 
to some of the older colleges, or established elsewhere, and 
they are laboring diligently, and with constantly increasing 
success, to meet the call of the day for more science. The 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Sheffield Scien- 
tific School of Yale College, the School at Dartmouth, and 
many others, are more or less distinctively of this class. 

But even with these schools in active and successful 
operation, that call has not yet been fully met. There 
must be a still wider diffusion of practical science. It 
must step forth from its great centers — its places of 
genesis and special culture — and go where it can be put in 
closest contact with the interests it is to benefit. There 
must be local institutions for these special ends — sub-cen- 
ters, in which these sciences shall take on their most con- 
crete and practical form. And these must be located at the 
great manufacturing centers, where they can aid most di- 



48 

rectly alike the artisan, the foreman, the designer, the 
inventor, in a word, the whole industrial population. 

These local institutions may, at the same time, if it is 
thought best, and if founded for the purpose, be also cen- 
ters of original scientific investigation, and aim to extend 
the boundaries of the sciences : but their chief functions, 
after all, will be to meet the local wants of particular dis- 
tricts, by teaching science in the concrete, or with special 
reference to its practical uses. 

Among institutions of this special, but highly important 
class, is to be reckoned, I apprehend, at least in its leading 
aim, the noble institution to-day inaugurated. The city 
and county of Worcester — so widely and honorably known 
for the extent and importance of their mechanical and man- 
ufacturing industries — are to be heartily congratulated that 
the institution has been planted here. The mechanics and 
artizans of the whole region round are to be congratulated on 
so splendid an accession to their facilities for acquiring knowl- 
edge, and making preparation for their special pursuits. 
The business men and capitalists are to be congratulated on 
the anticipated influence of the institution, directly and indi- 
rectly, in augmenting the resources of industry, and enhanc- 
ing the profits of labor and capital. The citizens generally 
are to be congratulated on the erection among them of so 
conspicuous a lighthouse of science — so important a center 
of intellectual activity and influence — with its corps of en- 
lightened instructors, its libraries, cabinets, apparatus, and 
other appliances for the difl'usion of useful knowledge. And 
last, but by no means least, those gentlemen in particular 
are to be congratulated, who, blessed of Heaven with noble 
and generous impulses, as well as with material prosperity, 
have, in this Institute of Industrial Science, conferred on 
the present and on coming generations, a boon of such in- 
estimable value ; and in so doing, have also erected to their 
own memories a monumenfum aere perennius^ in the truest 
sense — a monument as much grander than marble column 
or stately mausoleum, as the living intellect reigning in the 



49 

one is «:raiider than the dead substance of the other. Be 
their names, then, ever honored; be their memories ever 
green, among their fellow citizens, among the friends and 
cultivators of sound learning everywhere, as well as among 
those, to the latest generations, who shall especially reap 
the fruits of their wise beneficence. 

There is not, indeed, a more hopeful sign of the times, than 
the disposition manifested of late years, on the part of in- 
telligent men of wealth, to multiply just such benefactions 
as that which attracts our attention to-day. Those already 
realized in the scientific schools of our land are certainly 
auguries of the richest results in the future, both to science 
and the useful arts. 

Scarcely more than a beginning, however, has yet been 
made. The few such schools already established here and 
there, are none of them — or next to none — adequately en- 
dowed. The new one which opens here to-day under so 
ftivoring auspices, is destined, it is to be hoped, to do its 
work without the embarrassment of too limited means. But 
even suppose it to be always unembarrassed and uniformly 
successful, doing the full work expected of it; still, one 
liofhthouse is not enou2fh for a coast — nor even a few. 
Every harbor and headland if industry must be protected, 
every great manufacturing center should have its special 
school of applied science — of arts and trades. 

This is pre-eminently true of New England, which, more 
than any other portion of the country is dependent for ma- 
terial prosperity on her mechanical and manufacturing in- 
dustries. In agriculture she cannot compete with the more 
fertile regions of the west. Her mineral resources are 
comparatively scanty. But her hills and rocks, her schools 
and colleges, have nurtured a hardy, intelligent, inventive 
race of men, of indomitable energy, who are specially quali- 
fied, by nature and training, to pursue successfully the more 
difficult industrial arts. Yankee ingenuity is, indeed, 
Yankee power. 

It clearly becomes, then, a paramount duty, as well as 

7 



50 

interest, of New England capitalists, to sustain this ingenuity 
and give it efficiency and success, by fostering with liberal 
spirit just such institutions as that which here reflects so 
much honor on a few citizens of Worcester. Had I the ear 
of the wealthy manufacturing capitalists of the land, who so 
seldom reap the enjoyment from their wealth which they 
anticipate, and so often leave their fortunes to be litigated 
into the hands of the lawyers by the quarreling of heirs and 
legatees, I would say to them: "Good sirs, build all the 
palatial mansions you care to, for the enjoyment of your 
servants and domestics, or for your own ; leave enough to 
your heirs, if you will, to imperil their characters both for 
this world and the next; but then, I humbly entreat you, 
invest a fair portion of the surplus for the benefit of the arts 
and the artizans, that have enabled you to accumulate it ; 
invest it in suplementing and crowning our system of educa- 
tional institutions with an adequate sprinkling of institutes 
of industrial science. You cannot, I am sure, make a more 
profitable investment. You cannot better subserve either 
your own or the public good." 

Such institutions, while blessing their founders and sup- 
porters with the proud consciousness of noble deeds done, 
will bless also the industrial classes, will improve and ele- 
vate the arts, will stimulate and guide invention, will in all 
ways benefit the country and the world. 

Not that every artizan can expect to be highly educated, 
or become profound in mathematics, or chemistry, or me- 
chanics ; but he can acquire useful knowledge enough to 
make him a wiser man, a better citizen, a more perfect mas- 
ter of his art. The his^hest culture is never to be thought of 
for the great body of men who must handle the tools and im- 
plements of the arts. Our shops and mills we can never 
expect to see crowded with college graduates, any more 
than our farms. 

The mistake is sometimes made of imagining that the 
sons of farmers and mechanics can be trained in colleges of a 
high order to still follow the plow or drive the plane. But, 



51 

obviously, such a thing, as a rule, is impossible. It is 
against nature. You can, indeed, give high culture to a 
boy from the plow or the bench — provided, always, he has 
the brains ; but in that case you rarely see him back again 
on the ftirni or in the shop. You have, in fact, educated 
him out of the sphere for which you intended him. His 
trained powers become more available in other spheres. 
He enters a different walk. In the common phrase of those 
from whose ranks he comes, he is "spoiled by going to col- 
lege." It is this sort of spoiling that has given the world 
no small portion of its leading men in all the professions, 
its statesmen, authors and men of science — the worthy sons 
of equally worthy farmers or mechanics. But the point is, 
that they are not farmers or mechanics themselves. The 
law of transformation is inflexible. There is no use in 
butting against it. It has broken up, or rendered nugatory, 
nearly every agricultural college that has attempted a high 
education of farmers' boys for the farm. A professional or 
gentleman farmer may, indeed, have high culture, literary 
or scientific, and with capital enough, may live in a splen- 
did farm mansion ; but the field hand — the farmer that does 
his own work — will be best benefited by a lower training — 
by such a knowledge of principles and results as will best 
comport with his time, means and aims. 

And so with the artizan. His scientific attainments must 
usually be quite limited, and of the most practical kind. 
Give him a three or four years college course, and he is in- 
evitably " spoiled " for his calling. Like water raised to 
212^, he passes at once into another state — a state as difler- 
ent from the first as steam is from water ; and with this 
further difference, be it observed, that the new state for 
him is permanent. By no process yet discovered can you 
ever condense him again into a plain artizan, as you can 
steam to water. 

He may, indeed, become an engineer, civil or mechanical. 
He may fill the higher positions in large industrial estab- 
lishments. And for such functions it is, after all, that 



52 

schools of industrial science are expected, in the main, to 
qualify their pupils. This held is sufficiently broad and 
sufficiently important. Educated, practical talent is wanted 
in all directions, and the demaild for it is daily increasing. 
The institutions, then, that aim to meet that demand, de- 
serve the amplest encouragement and support. 

Nor are they less deserving, also, because they help to 
render the arts more productive, and to increase the profits 
of capital. I need not speak, before this audience, of the 
wonderful revolution that has been wrought by machinery 
both in the quantity and quality of products, or of its super- 
cedure of the old system of the division of hand labor, once so 
much lauded, as in pin making, and the like ; a superseclure 
resulting in the greater profit of the capitalist, and in the 
still greater physical and moral benefit of the classes thus 
relieved of their narrowing tasks. With all this you are 
familiar. You see it in your own mills and factories. You 
see there, indeed, some of the very marvels of mechanical 
genius and skill. You see there that wonderful card 
making machine, which Daniel Webster is said to have pro- 
nounced the nearest mechanical approach to human intelli- 
gence, and looking at which John Randolph exclaimed, 
"All but the immortal soul I" You see there, in fine, the 
varied mechanism that carpets our houses, that clothes our 
bodies, that gives wire to our telegraphs, and rails to our 
railroads, and implements to our farms, and machine-tools 
to our shops. You are familiar with the thousand and one 
triumphs of machinery. I need not remind you of them 
further. 

Nor need I remind you that the machinery of the world 
is to-day doing the work of thousands of millions of men ; 
and that in proportion as man brings under his control the 
forces of nature, and compels them to do his work, in that 
proportion he frees himself from the necessity of manual 
labor, or, at least, makes that labor yield him a proportion- 
ately increased revenue of wealth and enjoyment. Nor 
need I raise the inquiry how our government could possibly 



53 

have crushed out the rebellion, but for the looms and lathes, 
the gun factories and foundries, the reaping machines and 
locomotive engines, that so well performed the tasks of 
the millions of men who went forth, with loyal heart - and 
strong hands, to battle and to victory. I need only say, 
that institutions promoting obviously such results deserve 
to be cherished and sustained. 

Nor less so, again, that they stimulate and guide inven- 
tion. How much native ingenuity has been wasted — nay, 
worse than wasted, has brought disappointment and pov- 
erty on its possessor — just for the lack of such a knowledge 
of fundamental principles as would have prevented its ex- 
penditure on worthless or impossible contrivances, no statis- 
tician can ever estimate. But sure I am, that had I the 
capital annually sunk in this way alone — to say nothing of 
the capital that might have been accumulated by such in- 
genuity rightly guided — I would engage to build up a school 
of industrial science to which that inaugurated to-da}^ were 
but as a mole-hill to a mountain. The tons of rubbish in the 
Patent office, the fortunes sunk in profitless patents, yea, 
the very records of the mad-house, all plead most eloquent- 
ly for a better guidance of the inventive genius of the land. 
Many a life is wholly spent in chasing that ignis fataus, 
perpetual motion. Patents by the score are granted yearly 
for contrivances involving it; though granted, usually, not 
under that title, but some other less flagrantly obnoxious 
to people of intelligence — such as "Improved Motive Pow- 
er," and the like. The money sunk in Worcester county 
alone in misdirected ingenuity would, I doubt not, amply 
support this Institute of Industrial Science. 

But besides benefiting the artizan, increasing production, 
and guiding invention, the institutions we are contempla- 
ting tend to elevate the arts themselves, and place those 
engaged in them in a higher social position. That position 
is always relative — depending partly on the utility of the 
art, partly on the brain-power it implies; mostly indeed, 
on the latter; albeit the useful arts have also, doubtless, 



54 

been generally esteemed honorable even for their utility ; at 
least in poetry and oratory, if not in social usage. 

We may never, indeed, expect to see the blacksmith 
again actually deified and worsliiped for his skill and brawn 
in forging the bolts of war, like Vulcan and Thor, in the 
world's earlier and ruder ages. We may not even see him 
sitting in state with kings and queens — one of the highest 
ofiicers of the realm — as in Anglo-Saxon times. That early 
greatness of the Smith, which made the name one of high- 
est honor, and explains its prevalence in every city direc- 
tory, has, doubtless, long since departed, and departed for- 
ever, from the mere hand-forger of iron. 

But the modern representative of the blacksmith is the 
mechanical engineer. He is, professionally, the true suc- 
cessor of the early forger of armor, and, as such, reaps 
corresponding honors. The Knighting of the inventer of 
the Armstrong gun is but a repetition of the honor put 
upon the ancient blacksmith, in the -person of his modern 
representative. The social pot^ition accorded to Ark- 
wright for his cotton machinery, to Watt for his engine, 
to Nasmyth for his steam hammer — the real Vulcan that 
forges the shafts and armor plates of modern warfare — 
to Fairbairn for his iron buildings and mill-work, to 
Stephenson for his locomotives and bridges — the position 
readily accorded to such men, and to their compeers 
in every land, shows conclusively that the real dignity of 
the arts rests mainly on the elements of learning and 
genius they involve, and that the true way to elevate both 
arts and artizans is to base the former on the principles of 
sound science, and train the latter to a mastery of those 
principles. 

It is by such training that we shall best give true dignity 
to labor and best root out the old prejudices of the laborer 
against machinery and capital. Those prejudices have had 
less prevalence in this country than in the old, simply be- 
cause of the greater intelligence of our industrial popula- 
tion. It took saw mills a whole century, in England, to 



55 

overcome the opposition of the hand sawyers ; 1663 is the 
date of the first, 1767 of the second. Would it be possible 
in this country, or anywhere else, think yon, ; t the present 
day, as in England a century ago, for a legislature, in char- 
tering a canal, to stipulate expressly that the boats should 
be drawn by men only? Fortunately, we know but little 
of such prejudices here. Would that we knew less than 
we do. Would that the foreign ignorance that comes to 
us, and the native ignorauce that exists, were both neu- 
tralized and banished by the perfecting of our educational 
institutions, and the better diftusion of the light of knowl- 
edge. 

Let us cherish, then our schools of science. Let us wel- 
come the light of science in all ways ; not for its uses only, 
but for its own sake ; not for the control it gives us over 
the forces of nature, simply, but, as well, for the revelation 
it gives us of the universe of God. Let us indulge in no 
weak dread of its teachings. I do not believe — I never 
have believed, and never can believe — in its alleged iuH- 
del tendencies. That allegation itself is latent infidelity. 
It denies, virtually, that the God of nature and of revela- 
tion is one. I do not believe — I never have believed, and 
never can believe — that what God says in his Word he 
ever takes pains to contradict in his Works, or that what 
he says in his Works he ever contradicts in his Word. But 
I do believe, and I always expect to believe, that both, 
rightly interpreted, are perfectly in harmony. 

Let us welcome, then, light from every source ; knowl- 
edge and aid from every science and art. Let us believe in 
progress. With the enlightenment of true science, with a 
living Christianity, with our free institutions redeemed and 
vindicated, with a wise administration of equal laws, and 
the crowning favor of Heaven, what may we not justly 
hope for our civilization? What may we not justly hope 
for our country? 



56 

Professor John S. Woodman, of the Chandler Scientific School at 
Dartmouth College, having been introduced hy the President, spoke as 
follows. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

No other festive occasion could be so grateful to my feel- 
ings, or correspond so fully to the approbation of my judg- 
ment as the setting up a new institution of learning. You 
will see it can hardly be otherwise, when I say, that a good 
Providence has turned, substantially, the whole of my lii'e 
and labor to the arduous, but noble and satisfactory work 
of education. Therefore, with all the joyousness, with all 
the congratulation, with all the complimentary words, ex- 
pressed and to be expressed, and well befitting this occasion, 
I heartily sympathise, and need not use the time to repeat 
them. 

Let us turn rather, Mr. President, and gentlemen of the 
trustees and of the faculty of instruction, in the direction 
already occupied by your most serious thoughts — to the 
nature of the enterprise you this day inaugurate — a new 
voyage upon an unknown sea. Is it just to say upon an un- 
known sea — an unexplored ocean? Too nearly so. Allow 
me then, using my own limited observation and experience, 
to discuss with you these things, now more seriously press- 
ing you, that we may have more clearly in mind the great 
object of the voyage, the peculiar riches to be secured, the 
safe channels to be followed, and the rocks, shoals and 
quick-sands to be shunned ; so that, when the trials come, 
you may receive, from your friends and the general public, 
what you will certainly need — that support and sj^mpathy 
which can only be rendered by those who have an intelli- 
gent comprehension of the nature, purposes and methods 
of your enterprise. 

For a century past, the three learned professions, so 
called, have stood pre-eminent. The doctor, the lawyer and 
the minister, have been respected and honored, so generally 
and so highly, that the best ambition of the best young 



57 

men has been stimulated almost entirely in this direction. 
How well deserved the distinction ! How nobly, how in- 
telligently, and with what beneficence and liberality of opin- 
ion have the special work of those professions been, done ! 
How quick and easy the comprehension of all the other 
great interests of society outside their profession ! Is any 
new project before the public — a new road, a new edifice, a 
new school, or even a private undertaking of our own — 
whose counsel and advice do we value most? We go, first, 
to the minister, the lawyer or the doctor, as better able 
than others to give us sound and valuable advice, even in 
things outside their own profession. And what does not 
our country owe, for all that is most precious in our civil 
and social life, and over and above the medical attendance, 
the law and statesmanship and the religious teaching, to the 
iutluence and work of these same noble professions? What 
is it that has set these calliHo:s on hio'h ? Are these claims 
privileged before the law? No. Is there anything in the 
nature of the work that makes it better and more honorable ? 
Nothing, for at diflerent times and in other countries, all 
the other prominent pursuits of men — agriculture, the me- 
chanic arts, the fine arts, and so on — have taken the first 
rank. What, then, is the cause? Is it simply this? The 
leading occupations God has put before men, for employment, 
discipline and duty, are in themselves alike honorable, and 
it is the culture, character and excellence of the man him- 
self — not only his knowledge of his own profession, but of 
its relations to all other work, and of all the leading in- 
terests of society — that elevates his special pursuit. Who- 
ever has a comprehensive, quick and sound judgment upcm 
all that is s^reat and s^ood, and hi2:hest and best for humani- 
ty, makes noble the work of his hands, and puts it in high- 
er and more fitting, and better relations to every other pur- 
suit. And every calling, followed by such men will be 
elevated, and the one that has the most of such men will be 
the highest, whether it be law or theology, or the mechanic 

arts, farming or commerce, or any other. The three learned 

8 



5« 

professions have, hitherto, absorbed by far the greater por- 
tion of the liberally educated men of the times, and upon 
their broad culture, large views and full knowledge, stand 
their honor and power among rtien ; than which none other 
is so evident, controling and irresistible. This is the want, 
this the need, the principal need, of our great industrial 
pursuits, and this the work of your new college. 

It may be sufficient for our present purpose, to say that 
a liberal education is made up of these five departments — 
the physical, the literary, the scientific, the moral, and the 
religious. Each and every one of these is essential to the 
well educated man. Each one should receive special atten- 
tion. No one can be omitted or neglected. Take physical 
education, for example, b}^ which I would understand the 
study of anatomy, physiology, and the laws of health, and 
the training and exercise of all the bodily powers — the 
hand, the eye, the voice, &c, — best suited to health and 
vigor and efficient activity. Can any man in any business 
do without this? Take religious education — the constant 
and pains-taking effort to train and bring the afiections, the 
temper and the will (not of others but of ourselves) under 
the control of the principles of the Holy Gospel. Is not 
this one of the best and most essential elements of character 
and usefulness, for any person for any purpose, whether 
servant or master, journeyman or superintendent? Do not 
our intelligent capitalists, seeing the necessary relationship 
between religion and stability, security and profit, plant the 
church and cherish the gospel by the side of the new cot- 
ton mill ? Truly, in every calling, " The fear of the Lord 
is the beginning of wisdom," and whoever neglects this 
part of his training, suffers an awful deficiency. So the 
well trained man, to do best any one thing, or till most ac- 
ceptably even a narrow place, must have some culture in all 
these departments. Because a workman is to use only his 
hands, does he need no strength in his feet? Or, because 
he is to use chiefly the eye, shall he despise the hearing? 
By no means. And the best use of one capability can only 
be made when it is properly supported by all the rest. 



59 

The general course has been, in liberal culture, to attempt 
a fair elementary training in each of the five departments, 
and, at the same time, to make one of them central and 
leading, and give to it more attention and study. A liberal 
education upon a religious basis, was the current form in 
Europe a few centuries since. A liberal education upon 
a scientific basis is now the current leading form in 
Europe. A liberal education upon a literary basis has, 
for a century past, been the current form in our own 
country. The great institution that has moulded the char- 
acter of our people, is the college, an American institu- 
tion, planted here and there over the country, each fol- 
lowing, substantially, the same studies, methods and ob- 
jects — a compact, well balanced, single, liberal course, upon 
a literary basis, above and beyond the high school and 
academy. It embraces all the great departments of cul- 
ture, but the leading work and three-fourths the time was 
and is, substantially, in a literary direction, and the severest 
and best training upon the Greek and Latin languages. 
Hence, literary culture — the power of expression by means 
of language — is pre-eminent now in this country, and from 
the college has pervaded every class in society. The model 
man is the speaker. The first ambition is to move the 
public sensibilities by means of words. The people have 
become so sensitive to this sort of excitement, that they 
turn with difiiculty to any thing else. There has probably 
never been a people so highly educated as our own in a 
purely literary direction. What we now need is a liberal 
education upon a scientific basis, in order that a jjortion of 
our leading men — those whose tastes and capabilities, or 
whose pursuits in life are not literary — may be placed upon 
the same elevation ; and all the industrial pursuits and all 
the applications of science stand upon this broad and sufii- 
cient foimdation. The old academical departments of the 
colleges are doing a noble work. All literary pursuits 
want that training. Let them be cherished. There can be 
nothing better. That the long-contiiiUed Greek and Latin 



60 

discipline is the best work that can be done for the literary 
man is not disputed, and, as general training and culture, 
it is now the best teaching we have. The books, the meth- 
ods, the schools are all perfected by a century of experi- 
ence in that one direction. The sciences afford an equally 
good basis. But the books, the methods and the schools 
are yet to be perfected and put systematically upon their 
proper work. Liberal culture upon a scientific basis must 
stand side by side with the literary : with the same unity 
of plan, uniformity of method and singleness of aim all 
over the land. Then will the young men from these insti- 
tutions easily and eagerly enter upon any of the applica- 
tions of science in the business of life, and all these neglect- 
ed fields of science, art and taste be laid open to the public 
and made honorable and attractive. But now we are be- 
hind in these matters. We are greatly deficient. We 
suffer from it. How much a sound culture in a scientific 
direction would steady our political career, and give occupa- 
tion, vigor and calmness to our intense and loquacious men- 
tal activity. How much it is needed in every industrial 
pursuit, that the leading principles of all the sciences be 
familiar and ready at hand for application to every branch 
of industry. And how much it is needed to pervade, ex- 
pand and tranquilize our whole social life. This, gentle- 
men, is the great and noble work of the Worcester County 
Free Institute of Industrial Science. And I bring you 
greeting, from the Chandler Scientific Department of Dart- 
mouth College, and from the Academical Department also. 
There is no hostility or rivalry between literary and scien- 
tific culture. Each helps the other. They move in entire 
harmony. 

The public sentiment and the public voice will often try 
your wisdom. For many years you will be urged to omit 
one or another important requisition, and allow the student 
to pursue only that which is practical and he intends to use 
in after life. Perhaps to omit algebra or geometry that he 
may study mechanics or engineering. And you will have 



61 

to explain, over and over again, how it is that the training 
of all one's powers, and the thorough study of those few 
elements that lie at the foundation of all the sciences, is the 
quickest, the surest and the best w^j to prepare for any one 
kind of practical work. Any other way makes only a jour- 
neyman, and though ever so usetul for one kind of work, 
like the inanimate machines in the shop, he is powerless for 
everything else. An American citizen will never be con- 
tent to be thus first made into a machine. He will first be 
made a man, an expanded, educated, controling man, and 
that will satisfy him because it meets all his higher and bet- 
ter wants, and the inferior also. Then, with intelliirent 
individuality, he will make himself whatever he chooses. 
Special schools, for special technical training, are not the 
great want of our country to-day, though the first impres- 
sion is that they are the need ; because young men who 
have spent the time to get a fair, liberal culture on a scien- 
tific basis, or on a literary basis, cjmnot now, as a general 
thing, be kept longer under tuition, and such young men 
are the only persons for whom such institutions are fitted ; 
although these special objects are the current fashion of the 
day, and every new institution will have to try the experi- 
ment, more or less. I have no hesitation in saying, that 
the great illuminating scientific power of the next half cen- 
tury will be a single, simple well balanced course of lib- 
eral culture, upon a scientific basis, after the model of 
the old American colleges. Every institution will tend in 
this direction by the silent but intelligent adjustment, year 
by year, to the necessities of the hour, till accumulating 
strength and force upon this one main line of work, will 
make it all the more valuable and efifectual. But says one, 
"This is all well, but we do not want the liberal culture. 
We have not the time for it. We would learn a few 
things only about our own trade to help us get a living. 
The school offers its instruction, can we not buy what we 
want? Suppose the merchant should persist in selling us 
what we did not ask for ? " The school is no place of mer- 



62 

chandise. The teacher is no trader, but a power ordained 
of God for higher and better purposes ; standing above and 
in advance of his time, leading the age upward ; not fol- 
lowing the current fancies of the hour, but teaching what 
peoj^le most need, and what will best satisfy them when 
they get it. Just as the good physician does not give you 
the medicine you may think you want, but what will re- 
store you to health. The good minister may be desired to 
interest you, gratify your aesthetic taste, to edify you, and 
all that; but he preaches to you the gospel — humility, re- 
pentance, righteousness and judgment to come. You get 
something very different from what you expected, but you 
find the very thing you most needed. The true teacher has 
his heart set upon that which is highest and best for hu- 
manity, sure that all inferior good follows, and equally sure 
that they who follow directly the pleasure and the profit 
attain to not even the inferior good. The education that 
attempts to gn\l[fy and stimulate current fancies, for pay, 
may be a fair commercial speculation, but is spurious, and 
has no abiding educational power. It wants the life, the 
vigor, the control to turn men, with a strong hand, into 
right paths. Such deserves not your consideration. 

The three things indispensable to a good college, and 
wanting any one of which, it will certainly fail, and pos- 
sessing all of which, every thing beside is but the dust 
upon the balance, are these : money, wisdom and good 
teachers. It is difficult to say which is the most important. 
Neither one is effectual without the others. Money you 
have, liberally bestowed. And when I contemplate the in- 
telligent benevolence, that finds its expression in such a 
noble enterprise as this, I know that public notoriety is of 
little account. The intelligence that can even save and 
manage wealth, unwasted by the thousand importunities of 
the never-ending wants, wishes and fancies of self and 
of friends, and pay it over intact for a public good, looks 
constantly and anxiously to see it wisely expended, and 
only feels satisfied and rewarded when it is honestly and ju- 



63 

dicioLisly administered. There is in our country a spirit of 
large liberality, of intelligent benevolence, ready to supply 
all the real wants of the great and good enterprises of this 
kind, if there existed confidence in the wisdom that is to 
expend the money. But, with pain, I must admit that I 
think they see wisdom is far more difficult to find than 
money. Wisdom is needed to adjust plans and aims to 
means ; to find the highest and best things ; to aim only at 
just what can be well accomplished ; to keep out of the way 
secondary, inferior and outside matters, that the money and 
the labor may all count upon the vigor and efficiency of the 
few great, central objects ; and that the character of the in- 
stitution may be steady, growing, and permanent. The liv- 
ing force of the college is the teacher, and the power of the 
institution rests in the hands of each instructor, in his own 
line of work. Do not be deceived. The good professor is 
not, necessarily, the famous man, the great speaker, or the 
great writer, or the master of books, or the very learned 
man, or the popular man. The teacher is simply to manage 
his class and his subject, by patient and skillful work, so 
that the young men will themselves work patiently and dili- 
gently upon it and take an interest in it, and acquii-e as 
much as possible, in a given time, of the subject and of the 
best discipline that belongs to it, and of its relation to 
other thintrs. His mind cannot be on other matters. The 
only hope and ambition of the good teacher is to make 
great and good men of his students. As to being popular, 
he will strive to deserve the approbation of all good men, 
and then take whatever comes. That is all any man can 
properly do. As to being a great and distinguished pro- 
fessor, for students to talk about, what does that amount 
to? He prefers that students talk about their studies and 
take great interest in them. And just in proportion to 
his quiet and steady contact and labor with his class, will 
be his value to the college. As to educating young men — 
and your institute is no place for children or small boys ; let 
them be tutored at the high school till there is an insipient 



64 

and growing manhood in body, mind and character. As to 
the teacher's educating his students, it is out of the question. 
But he will aid, direct and stimulate, so that the student 
shall educate himself, and sthnd forth with that self-con- 
scious power, independence and individuality, which is the 
best type of the American citizen and the highest tj^pe of 
the educated man. 

In all these matters you have the advantage in this rich 
and thrifty manfacturing district, of the best business expe- 
rience and capability. This is all you need. The idea is 
sometmies hinted that a college, with its imposing profess- 
ors and its accumulation of wisdom, must be managed on 
different principles from those you find necessary in com- 
mon business. Do not suffer yourselves to be confused by 
any such absurdity. The same direct, prompt, judicious 
and open management that makes your manufactory or 
machine shop successful, will make this institute successful ; 
and nothing else will. Keeping the great objects before 
you, aim directly at them in the shortest and best way, in 
your own judgment, bound to no outside model or theury 
that you do not fully comprehend and approve. If you 
want anything ever so much, and have not the money to 
get it, do not get it. Try no such games of chance, in the 
hope of tempting Divine Providence. Get the best men 
you can for the work you want done, and expect them to 
do that and not spend their time on something else. And 
when the work is not well done change at once, as you do 
in your machine shops. Why, among the old colleges you 
would sometimes get the idea, that a man once appointed 
professor cannot be removed though never so inefiicient, 
and that absurdities should be retained because they are 
old. Get the best students you can, and in this respect the 
quality will improve as fast as your character as an institn- 
tion grows. Keep them well and happily busy and under 
your care in all the great lines of liberal culture, and when 
they cease to profit by your care let them go to their 
friends. The trials of college discipline will not disturb 



05 

you. I have do fears that the judgment and good sense, 
which guides so well the great industries of this region, 
will fail to enter here and give ample success to this new 
seat of learnino^ This same sound sense and administra- 
tive abilily is the great want of the old colleges to-day. 
It would be half just to say that antiquated methods, con- 
fusion, feebleness, pride, poverty and wastefulness, in the 
general administration, oppress them like a night-mare. 
And in my love and reverence for the old literary college 
and its exceeding value, I tremble for its safety. Could I 
say something enticing or offensive, yet sufficient to arouse 
the alumni and friends of those institutions to cease their 
mutual admiration festivities till they had put their old 
alma maters into a sound administrative and financial con- 
dition, I would deem it the best favor to them and to the 
age, that could be rendered. 

You will be impatient to have character and standing as 
an institution ; but have patience. The great element of 
character, not to be stepped over, is time. When your 
graduates go out and settle, here and there over the land, 
and the neighbors look on and say, "that man is intelligent 
and able ; " " how well he attends to his business ; " " he is 
an honest man ; " "he never quarrels ; " "how well he ap- 
preciates all public improvements ; " " he is interested in 
the school, the church and society ; " " his advice is sensible 
and judicious;" and, "he got his liberal education at the 
Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science ; " — 
when this is felt and said, and every point of the compass 
indicates tidings fragrant with this aroma, you will have a 
character. Waste no strength in pompous catalogues, 
advertising for great numbers or great notoriety, or for 
splendid equipments, this or that. They are all temporary, 
futile, worse than useless. They interfere with your work 
of making splendid men, and this is the sole foundation of 
the character that will satisfy you. 

Pardon me, Mr. President, if I say you are too modest 
in your hopes of this new institution, you have so largely 



^6 

assisted. It will, indeed, fit young men better for the prac- 
tical work of the various industrial pursuits of the region, 
and more than that. Aim at nothing short of the highest 
and noblest results, and why may you not hope for reasona- 
ble success in that, as well as in any less elevated purpose? 
Certainlv. Let this be the model institution of the reo:ion. 
Let its plans, methods, aims and spirit pervade and elevate 
the whole educational system around you. Let its culture, 
directly and indirecth% in due time, ennoble every per- 
son in the resrion. This can be done. It should be done, 
and by a single half-century of faithful work, advance this 
growing population conspicuously beyond their age. And 
may this city and this institute, from the beneficent illumi- 
nation to-day lighted here, become cherished household 
words by every fireside in every valley of our broad land, 
from the farthest Maine to the distant Oregon. 

The President introdnced Mr. Charles O. Thompson, elected Profess- 
or of Chemistry and Principal of the Institute, who has the confidence 
of the Trustees, on account of his success as an educator, and now 
enters on his duties here with the advantage of a recent visit to similar 
schools in Europe. 

In the Greek races it was customary for the masters, who 
had trained the youth, to stand midway of the course and 
utter a warning or a cheer as the eager runners passed 
them. The panting athlete drew a sudden inspiration for 
new exertion, at a critical moment of the race, from the 
familiar voice he had learned to trust. It strengthened his 
flagging courage and gave him new hope of victory. 

\A'ith the same emotion have I listened to the distin- 
guished educator who has just addressed us. After ten 
years interval — almost midway in this long race of life — I 
hear words of advice and encouragement from the coun- 
sellor and teacher of my youth ; words to which I listen all 
the more eagerly as receding years have made more prec- 
ious that earlier instruction. I come, under these strangely 
alleicd circumstances, to find the unreasoning admiration of 



67 

boj^hood changed, by unconscious magic, in full measure, 
into the respect and confidence of manhood. 

Alas, Sir, that my orbit must forever be an asymptote to 
yours. 

Age and care have not wholly neglected you in the past, 
I see. May age and care deal gently with you in all the 
years to come. 

Serus iu caelum redeasi 

The exigencies of the hour compel me to defer to a more 
convenient time, the discussion of the general subject of 
technical education, and proceed at once to state the his- 
tory, purpose and plan of this new cfiort in its behalf. To 
this end, a glance at the general field of educational effort 
will suflSce. 

President \A'hite, of Cornell University, in his inaugural 
address, calls attention to the subtle sense of the true 
source of the strenath of the nation, which led cons^rcss, in 
the bitterest moment of the war, to appropriate land to 
found agricultural colleges. 

Mr. Phipps, the agent of the Massachusetts Board of 
Education, has entered into a laborious computation to ex- 
hibit, iu an exact form, the actual excess of waoes received 
by the Lowell operatives who have had some education^ 
above the average of the others ; and so to find a certain fixed 
ratio between the increase of intelligence and the increase 
of wages. There could uot be two methods of reasoning, 
on the same subject, more widely diverse, and reaching 
the same certain results. The most philosophical patriot- 
ism and the purest selfishness are stirred by the same ap- 
peal. At some point between the desire for knowledge for 
its own sake, and the quest for it as a means of pecuniary 
emolument, lies the opinion of every man who thinks at all 
on the subject. But no question, at the present moment, 
engages more completely the most serious attention of the 
most thoughtful men, than this of popular' education. With 



all the diversity of sentiments and of feeling, there is one 
quality common in all expressions of opinion, and that is 
dissatisfaction. It is plain that present methods do not 
meet all present wants. Many "who take no part in the war 
between classics and sciences, and some even who fight with 
the Greeks, are convinced that there is a defect somewhere 
in modern methods of education ; that too many boys 
rush half-trained into business, and are hopelessly dwarf- 
ed at the outset ; that too many college students spend 
the four best ^^ears of their lives in high social converse 
with their friends or browsing in the libraries, instead of 
working to master the college studies. It cannot be shown 
that the American college, regarded as an organic force, has 
essentially degenerated, excepting, perhaps, in the quality 
of moral courage. It is true that hundreds of boys enter 
college who are not fitted in any proper sense ; but once in, 
the college does its best for them. The method of teaching 
the classics in preparation is, in many cases, unscientific and 
bad. So, as the quality of scholarship which the college 
finds in applicants has deteriorated, the results of college 
training have become less and less general and conspicuous. 
But it has been found that men can be tolerably good doc- 
tors, lawyers and even ministers without a college diploma, 
while the supremacy in those great fields of intellectual 
labor where the results of abstract thought must be directly 
applied to the promotion of the welfare of mankind in ma- 
terial things is conceded to many men who are guiltless of 
Latin and Greek. Again, in calculating the eflicieucy of the 
college, even when regarded, as it ought to be, as the high- 
est educational force in the country, too much importance 
has been attached to the studies pursued, and too little to 
the quality of the teaching. Thomas Hughes was not 
moved to the noble issues of his magnificent manhood by 
Avriting hexameters at Oxford, but by feeling, every day, 
the magnetic power of Arnold of Rugby. Osgood «Iohnson 
so stirred the ambition of the more thoughtful boys at 
Andover, and so thorougly identified himself with them ii\ 



69 

their noblest efforts, that to secure his commendation seemed 
to include all human happiness. One of these boys was 
John Newton Putnam, to whose exact and most elegant 
scholarship, combined with rare grace of teaching its best 
results, hundreds of graduates of Dartmouth College, in all 
departments of practical life, look back with gratitude and 
admiration, as the source of their best methods of thought. 
There are, to-day, lawyers unraveling complicated cases, 
ministers seeking effective methods of presenting sacred 
truth, physicians searching into the mysteries of human life, 
teachers doing their unpretending but imperishable work, 
merchants solving the problems of trade and finance, who 
feel, each in his own emergency, the present help of that old 
college training, which was not in the Greek language, but in 
living contact with that calm, genial, self-contained, imper- 
turbable man, who had reached through the Greek and laid 
hold on the eternal principles of human action which had their 
best expression in it. The subtleties of the language were 
to him phases of the wonderful mind ; its difficulties — there 
were none f(n* him. Its beauties he made suo^i2:estions and 
types of all beauty. The orations of Demosthenes were 
not in his class-room happy illustrations of Greek gram- 
mar, but a model whence, by most dexterous manipulation, 
he formed in his students' minds ideas of persuasive elo- 
quence. Through the Greek plays he let the pupil look 
into the noblest human conception of the power of the su- 
pernatural and the invincible force of truth. The dullest 
intellect was quickened, the grossest tastes were elevated, 
the most depraved morals even were purified by the power 
of his scholarly manliness. He was strong without being 
resistless, refined without a suspicion of effeminancy, exact 
but not pedantic, a lover of truth, but charitable towards 
all who erred ; fidl of all delicate tastes, but not fastidious ; 
and to crown all he had the power of inciting every pupil 
to strive to obtain the same gifts. He was a model teacher. 
But the world has heard more of the Greek lauiruao^e, as 



70 

taught at Dartmouth, than of the man who taught it — rath- 
er who taugltl through it. 

For these reasons, the lack of adequate preparation, in- 
efficient teaching, and others, a conviction has slowly 
fastened itself upon the minds of thoughtful persons, that 
the college has failed to meet all the wants of a nation Avhich 
develops nevj wants with every year of its existence. It 
does not mend matters to rail at Americans for their notori- 
ous practicality and want of aesthetic culture. True there 
is no Parthenon in our Athens ; but what we want is to 
know where are the hewn stones out of which we can build 
one. 

All attempts at revolution in education have failed. 
Witness the phonetic system, business colleges, and indeed 
the persistent efforts, made of late, to destroy confidence in 
classical training. Revolution is not what sober men want ; 
but reformation. Mr. Goldwin Smith's aphorism is much 
quoted — "Let us never glorify revolution." The difficulty 
is this : granted that the college is as good as ever, not 
more than one boy in ten goes there, and a considerable 
percentage of those who do go, waste the time spent there. 
Shall nothing be done for the other nine-tenths of the boys ? 
Shall they go on learning trades, without the slightest idea 
of the principles on which trades depend? Shall there be 
no response to the cry of need embodied in the ejaculation 
of that Chicago locomotive-driver : "I know how every part 
of that machine is made. Sir, but I 'd give a thousand dol- 
lars to know why she's made so.'^ 

Again, it is not to be supposed that every laggard in col- 
lege is of necessity a fool. In many cases, boys are forced 
into college and forced to stay there four years, who have no 
inclination or taste for the college studies, and to whom the 
whole system of instruction is a prolonged and unmitigated 
torture. How many times you have seen boj^s drilled by the 
hour in Greek, who had long before lost all interest in the 
study and accepted the situation as inevitable fate. Boys are 
often placed in this false position through the most laudable 



71 

ambition of fathers and mothers, to give them an education, 
and there has been, hitherto, no alternative. It is cheer- 
fully conceded that a classical training may be the best way 
to develop the tastes and monld the minds of boys who do 
not exhibit any special aptness for any form of eflfort. Or, 
if it is conceivable that American boys, as a class, are wil- 
ling and able to devote seven years to pure intellectual 
training and then begin preparation for real life, perhaps 
there would be no room for argument. But the question 
for us is, what provision shall be made for the education of 
American boys as we Hnd them. There have been three 
phases of thought on this question in New England. 

The first grew out of the fact that the Puritans came here 
to found a church — not a nation. The school was subordi- 
nated to the church and under its control. Let us thank 
God that our fathers laid deep these two corner stones on 
which subsequent generations have reared such a fair super- 
structure I But to them the church was of all-absorbing 
interest. In that elder day to be a minister was "greater 
than a king." The most promising boys were sent to col- 
lege, and then, if "called to the work," were fitted for the 
pulpit. Trades and manufactures were held to be occuj3a- 
tions in w^hich the adversary had men at an unusual advan- 
tage. This phase of opinion is well embodied in the com- 
mon family words : "That boy isn't smart enough to go to 
college. We must put him to a trade." 

The second phase came in with the close of the war of 
1812, or perhaps wdth the public career of Thomas Jefier- 
son. It was a kind of modified iconoclasm. A disposition 
to hold learning in contempt. It never took deep hold 
anywhere, and soon softened into a determination to erect, 
beside the college, a school where the mathematics, sciences 
and modern languages could be taught, and boys could be 
fitted more immediately for practical life. This union wdth 
the college has proved detrimental to the scientific schools, 
in many respects, and the professors in these schools are 
almost unanimous in the opinion that they would gain by 



72 

securing an independent foundation. But precisely out 
of this nettle danger, the flower safety was plucked. 
The Institute of Technology in Boston is the latest expres- 
sion of this new opinion, and one of the noblest. It is, 
m fact, the only institution in the United States that an- 
swers perfectly in its plan to the German and French Poly- 
technic Schools which are the best of the kind in the world. 
But, for most, the scientific schools and the Institute of 
Technology are too expensive, and the course of study pur- 
sued in the former, at least, too theoretical. They have 
not served to correct the current infidelity on the subject 
of thorough education. In the popular mind this phase of 
thought has sometimes found expression in the flippant sa}"- 
ing, "John went to college, he wasn't fit for anything else." 

The third phase is embodied in the question : " What 
shall be done for the boys?" High schools are not high 
enough, and are only possible in the larger towns. Colleges 
are not ample enough. Scientific schools are too theoreti- 
cal lor the majority of boys. The Institute of Technology 
is crowded, but were it not, it costs too much for most. 
Boys in general make haste to be rich rather than wise. 
We must have a course of study and the dr^ill of the class- 
room. Knowledge is wealth as well as power. The surest 
way to strengthen the nation is by an increase of intelli- 
gence controlled by religious principle. The mass of boys, 
as things are now, are not properly educated. The ques- 
tion recurs again : " What shall we do for the boys?" 

One answer to this question is the new institution which 
is this day dedicated to the service of sound learning. 

In the year 18 Go John Boynton, of Templeton, placed 
one hundred thousand dollars in the hands of his life-long 
friend, David Whitcomb, for the endowment of a free 
school. Mr. Boynton had no fixed idea in respect to the 
plan of such a school, but had long wished to do something 
for the cause of education. He was a man who had toiled 
in the work-shop. His wealth was the result of a life of in- 
dustry and frugality. But, as it has happened in thousands 



73 

of like cases, he was led by reflection upon his own limited 
opportunities for acquiring knowledge in his youth, to think 
much of the needs of boys who cannot or who will not go 
to college. Mr. Whitcomb entered, with warm sympathy, 
into the plans of his friend, and, keeping the name of the 
donor a secret, took counsel with such able advisers as Dr. 
Seth Sweetser and Judge Emory Washburn. As the re- 
sult of much investigation and correspondence, Mr. Boyn- 
ton executed the remarkable instrument which was the 
foundation of this school. He declared his earnest desire 
that this school should be for the better education of boys 
who do not intend to enter any of the so called learned pro- 
fessions. Hence he indicated some studies to be specially 
pursued ; mathematics, including civil and mechanical en- 
gineering, drawing, designing and modeling ; architecture ; 
chemistry , including metallurgy ; the French language ; 
book-keeping, and the science of teaching. He also direct- 
ed that the pupils of the school should be instructed, as far 
as possible, in the use of toois and the manipulation of ma- 
chinery. Not unmindful of the character and reputation of 
the 3^outh who would enjoy the benefit of his generosity, he 
wished that the provisions of the General Statutes of Mas- 
sachusetts in reo^ard to relio^ious instruction in schools 
should be carefully observed, and that the bible should be 
daily read in the school. To guard this important trust, a 
body of gentlemen, equally conspicuous for learning, busi- 
ness abilit}^ and practical mechanical skill, were constituted, 
under the laws of the State, trustees of the Worcester 
County Free Institute of Practical Industrial Science. — All 
royal personages are christened with long names. Loyalty 
and affection soon contrive to shorten them. Perhaps in a 
few years we shall know our institution as the Worcester 
Technical School. 

While this man of plain sense and practical business 
ability had been gradually solving the problem of "what 
shall be done for the boys?" another man of plain sense 

was looking at the question from a totally different stand- 

10 



74 

point. Educated at Harvard College under the old regime^ 
familiar, after the manner of that old regime^ with the 
Greek and Latin classics, deeply indebted to classical train- 
ing for untold pleasures of taste, in the catholicity of spirit 
which is thus engendered, he could but wish that the boys, 
whose whole ambition and inclination point them towards 
the shop or the counting-room, could have a better education 
than, under existing forms, they are likely to get. This 
gentleman who presides to-day over the ceremonies that 
signalize the accomplishment of his wishes, at once, by a 
most liberal gift, responded to the condition imposed by 
Mr. Boynton, that the citizens of Worcester should provide 
suitable grounds and buildings. To his aid came another 
from the ranks of the practical men, (whom physical in- 
firmity hinders from honoring this occasion with his pres- 
ence). So that ethics and mechanics join hands, by a new 
but by no means unnatural alliance, in this new enterprise. 
Following the lead of these liberal donors, came a large 
number of the generous citizens of Worcester Count}^ ; so 
that in a short time the necessary amount was subscribed to 
secure the donation of Mr. Boynton, and the scheme was 
fully inaugurated. 

At this stage in the history, occurred one of those in- 
stances of the surrender of personal preference to the gen- 
eral good, which are as rare as they are most praise w^orthy. 

Mr. Ichabod Washburn had long cherished a purpose 
to provide some means for educating apprentices in a more 
substantial manner than is at present in vogue. Himself a 
manufacturer on an extensive scale, he could appreciate the 
importance of founding practical skill in the industrial arts 
on a knowledge of the sciences on which those arts depend. 
So impressed was he with the importance of combining 
theory and practice in the completest possible manner, that 
he cheerfullv consented to meri)^e his own scheme in this, 
and made the princely contribution of a fully equipped ma- 
chine-shop. He proposes to place it in charge of a compe- 
tent, practical mechanic, to employ a certain number of 



75 

skilled workmen and to receive boys from the school as ap- 
prentices. They will thus learn, as in any shop, the use of 
tools, the management of machines, and in short, the work- 
ing of wood and metals, in connection with and illustration 
of their daily lessons in the school. They will work about 
three hours a day and be under constant, and, it is hoped, 
effective supervision. The shop will be ready in the spring. 
It is expected that the power of the shop will be expended 
in the production of articles of standard value, which will 
be sold in the regular way of trade. To stock the shop 
for the first year, Mr. Washburn gives $5000, and, to pay 
the salaries of the superintendent and skilled workmen, and 
to defray other expenses, he gives the interest of a fund of 
$50,000. Though the main design is educational, it is 
hoped that under such circumstances as these, some profit 
will accrue to the shop, after all expenses are paid and the 
stock kept whole. Any such income Mr. Washburn wishes 
to be devoted to paying the expenses of worthy boys, in- 
curred during their attendance at the Institute ; for a promi- 
nent motive in the endowment is to make it a charity for 
those who merit such help. 

In the shop as in the school, after mastering general 
principles, boys will devote themselves to whatever special 
departments their tastes lead them ; but the choice once 
made must be adhered to. Boys will not be expected to 
range through the shop picking up scraps of information. 
According to this view of the case, the school and the shop 
will exactly supplement each other. 

This practical element in the Worcester school is so nov- 
el, and so much distrust is cherished towards all so called 
manual-labor schools, that I venture to glance a moment at 
some of the causes of failure in the experiments hitherto 
tried. In some cases the relation of the manual labor de- 
partment to the institution has not been intimate enough to 
l^revent its utter separation from the other departments. 
It has either died out or gained an independent existence. 
Whether the manual labor has been performed on the land 



76 

or in shops, whenever it has not had a close connection 
with the studies of the school, or formed a part of them, it 
has not secured the cordial support of the students. It has 
been playing at work^ rather than work — and some other 
form of amusement has proved more attractive to the pupils. 
So the experiment has often failed on account of sheer in- 
indiflference in those for whose benefit it was designed. In 
other cases, the income has fallen so far below the expenses 
that the department has been abandoned in disgust. 

Educators in Europe have experienced similar difficulties, 
though experiments in this line have been more vigorously 
pushed in France and Germany than here. At Berlin the 
workshop connected with the school was tried and aban- 
doned ; then again, with the same result. Now the third 
experiment is in progress. At Vienna and other centers of 
technical instruction there is the same record of failure. 
As regards German schools, the result could have been pre- 
dicted. The Germans carry economy beyond tlie limits of 
prudence. Hence the shop was not well equipped, in many 
cases furnished with cast-off machinery, under the idea that 
such was good enough for boys to learn from, and the labor 
in the shop must be all done by the boys under the care of 
a superintendent. It is no wonder that such a shop fails to 
be largely remunerative. There is another plan much in 
vogue in Germany, which was easily suggested by the fail- 
ure of this. In the month of September the pupils of the 
Polytechnic School are required to spend a certain number of 
hours each day in a shop or factory, according to the special 
line of study pursued by each, and to report in detail on 
their return to the school in October. This plan has its ad- 
vantages to be sure, but it falls so far short of what is need- 
ed, that it does not satisfy any one. At the famous Ecole 
de la Martiniere at Lyons, the shop is an integral part i)i 
the school. Every boy works in it at least one hour each 
school day, till the time comes to press laboratory work 
and modeling, when all who pursue these branches are ex- 
cused from the shop. The teachers and friends of the 



77 

school have as much faith in this, as in any deijartment. 

Now it is very plain, first, that work done by apprentices 
solely, cannot be first-class work and nobody will buy it in 
open market ; and secondly, that a shop where second rate 
work is done, is not the place for boys to learn. The ex- 
periment about to be tried in Worcester, will not fail for 
any of the causes just mentioned. The work produced by 
the Washburn Machine Shop will l)e the best of its kind. 
Hence it will sell well, and at the same time be a good 
model for the apprentices. The boys will have nothing to 
tempt them to slight the work for the sake of some tempo- 
rary advantage. The apparent disadvantage of a large 
number of apprentices is balanced by the gift of a full stock, 
as well as complete machinery, at the outset. So that after 
keeping the stock good, and paying all expenses, there 
must be some balance to be applied to the benevolent pur- 
pose of the donor, to aid deserving young men. 

The question is often asked " will all the boys work in 
the shop ? " Probably not. Those who choose chemistry 
as their special study will certainly need all the time which 
can be spared from the class room, in the laboratory. 
Those who aim at being machinists will be expected to 
work in the shop. But precisely how this matter will be 
finally adjusted, it is not possible to say at present. This, 
at least, is certain, every student in the institution will 
have as broad an opportunity, as is possible in any school, 
to learn the practical applications of everything he stud- 
ies. Add to these considerations the facts that boys 
whose faculties are kept constantly alert by the training of 
the school, are in a condition to learn, foster than others, 
the practical applications of science, and that the time spent 
in the shop will serve the double purpose of instruction and 
physical exercise, and it will be admitted that this form of 
a manual-labor school is at least an experiment worth try- 
ing. 

With this somewhat prolix exposition of the most obscure 
feature of our enterprise, I hasten to say, more broadly, 



78 

that the Worcester Technical School offers to the boys of 
Worcester County an education based upon the modern 
languages, the natural sciences, drawing and the mathemat- 
ics. Technical education meails a symmetrical discipline of 
the mind as an ultimate end, and practical familiarity with 
at least one form of applied science as a proximate end. 
To gain these ends it follows the line of studies just enume- 
rated. It aims to furnish the same capital for the practical 
man that the college gives the professional man, and in 
addition to that, some acquaintance with his business. 
It is not supposed that boys will be suddenly changed 
into I'esponsible men ; it is not supposed that the school 
will give sagacity and business ability where these are 
lacking. But it is supposed that it will give every boy 
a good education, and a means of earning his living be- 
sides. With this start he must enter the lists and fight his 
way in the world like other men. Reliable men do not spring 
into existence Minerva-like, full-armed. Skill and good 
judgment are the growth of years. This, in short, is what 
is meant by technical education. We borrow the name as 
well as the plan from the Germans, and a hasty glance at the 
German system, may not, therefore, be out of place. The 
lowest school in the Saxon system is the Bezirk Schule. 
To this, in the main, corresponds the Kindergarten, which 
draws its support wholly from private sources. Above 
these is the Burgher Schule, though sometimes including 
pupils of an age more suitable to the Bezirk Schule. These 
two grades are not sharply defined. Children remain in 
the Burgher Schule till the age of fourteen, at most. Up 
to this point they all have the same training — in reading, 
writing and spelling, drawing, arithmetic, latin, geography, 
history and singing, with daily lessons on religious duties. 
Beyond this point there are two distinct, parallel courses. 
At the age of fourteen, and sometimes sooner, the German 
boy must decide his course for life. If he aspires to Uni- 
versity honors, he enters the Gymnasium and thence passes 
to the University. There he may pursue theology, medi- 



79 

cine or law, or theoretically, any other branch of human 
knowledofe. 

But, in eflect, all knowledge of applied science acquired 
at the University is wholly theoretical. Practical, is a word 
at which university men shudder, while liberal, in the special 
sense of the word, alarms the Polytechnikers. If the boy 
decides not to go to the University, he enters the Real 
Schule, where he remains two years, and then, at the age of 
sixteen, enters the Polytechnic. In the Polytechnic School, 
draioing, pure mathematics, phj^sics and the French and 
Enoflish lani^uaofes are tauofht with ofreat thoroutrhness to all 
the pupils. After a fixed period, generally at the middle 
of the course, the boys are placed in separate classes a part 
of the da}^, according to the department chosen by each, as 
a specialty, whether civil engineering, mechanical engineer- 
ing, practical chemistry or commerce. At the same time 
there are studies of a more general character which all must 
take. Another plan is to divide the pupils into sections at 
the outset, and have a general course adapted to the wants 
of those who do not wish to enter a special. In these two 
schools, the Real and the Polytechnic, the tastes of the stu- 
dent are carefully consulted at the outset, but his course 
once decided, he must follow it rigidly. The Technical 
schools have a great advantage over the Academic, and the 
results are correspondingly excellent. 

The University students affect a kind of contempt for the 
Polytechnikers, partly due to traditions and partly to jeal- 
ousy ; but the Professors in corresponding departments in 
the two systems, meet on terms of perfect equality and 
o^ood will. I attended a a'atherino' of the German Natuer- 
forscher and Physicians at Dresden, where Prof. Hoffman 
of the University of Berlin, joined issue earnestly and 
cordially with Dr. Fleck of the Saxon Polytechnic School, 
in topics in chemistry ; and, in general, as far as distribution 
of offices was concerned, and the respect shown to the va- 
rious speakers, I could not discover the slightest advantage 
on the side of the University men. The same system of 



80 

education obtains in France. The emperor has been a 
warm friend of Technical schools, and has established them 
in nearly all the large towns of the empire. In many re- 
spects, as mechanical drawing, the French schools are 
superior to any others in the world. The superiority of 
the French and German manufactures over the English, at 
the International Exhibition, was largely due to these 
schools. The most advanced statesmen and educators 
of England found a solace for their mortification in vigor- 
ous efforts to establish similar schools in Great Britain. 
Even British prejudice is rapidly softening in the rays of 
this new sun. 

Now while the general training in all these schools is -the 
same, discipline of the powers of observation through the 
natural sciences, of the sense of form and proportion through 
the practice and study of drawing, of the reasoning powers 
through the pure mathematics and of faculty of expression 
through the study of some language other than the pu- 
pil's own, the number of special departments or forms of 
applied science in which instruction is given, differ greatly. 
It is determined more or less by the prevailing occupation 
of the people in the locality where the school is established. 
At the Ecole de la Martiniere at Lyons, the city of silk, 
Chemistry is the prominent study, though great importance 
is given to the department of mechanics. At Chemnitz, 
famous for machinery, these two departments change places 
in prominence. In Saxony, Mining Engineering is made 
the prominent study. The length of the Polytechnic course 
varies from two to four years. 

But it may be asked, what does all this instruction amount 
to? Did it ever occur to any one to inquire who directs the 
dyeing of the Lyons silks, the French, German and Belgian 
cloths, and the ribbons of Basle? Who draws the designs 
for the prints, who models the ornamentation on thousands 
of articles of glass and crockery ware, who direct the myriad 
factories, gas works, machine shops, mines and smelting fur- 
naces in Europe ? Such are in general the varied occupations 



81 

of the graduates of the technical schools. These young men 
are never left without employment. They seldom seek long 
for places. The government always aids in supporting the 
schools and offers prizes for excellence in any department. 
The most promising graduates are taken at once into the ser- 
vice of the government. In France especially, if a boy in a 
technical school, shows special aptness for drawing, mathe- 
matics, designing, engineering or any other branch, he is 
promptly noticed by the government inspector and reported. 
After this the government directs his studies and in some 
cases pays his expenses. This is the secret of the extraor- 
dinary ability of the French engineers. The benelits of this 
system are not confined to France. Every one who has 
traveled in Switzerland has noticed the splendid carriage 
roads that lie upon the sides of the mountains like enor- 
mous serpents. These furnish a single illustration of the 
efficiency of the French engineering. And every other 
country borrows from France. In the United States for 
example, fortifications are built after Yauban, and carriage 
roads according to the plan in Savoy. Indeed a know^l- 
edge of the French language is indispensable to one who 
would keep pace with the advancement of Science and Art. 
But this system in its perfection, cannot be at once trans- 
ferred to America, for many reasons. The most prominent 
of which is the radical difierence between the European 
boy and the American. Take the German as a specimen. 
He is trained from infancy to a certain subjection to his 
master, the American begins to cherish independence of all 
masters, almost before his traininoj beirins. The German 
boy stands quiet to be chiseled into shape — the American 
is never quiet, and the artist's first endeavor is to keep him 
in one position long enough to receive an impression. The 
German boy is a block of marble — the American, plastic 
clay. The German expects restraint and is helpless with- 
out guidance — the American is impatient of all restraint, 
and wants no guide. The one has talent, the other genius. 

The German knows everything about something — the Amerj- 

11 



82 

can knows something about everything. One builds of 
stone, the other of wood. The world owes more to the 
German — it exp'ects more of the American. Now, to su- 
l^erinduce as much as possible of the thorough discipline of 
the German school upon the American enthusiasm is the 
problem. It is hoped by energy and enthusiasm in teach- 
ing, to interest the boys of this school so deeply in their 
studies, that they will find a pleasure in working and so 
solve this problem. 

Another obstacle to the success of technical education in 
this country is the lack of good instruction in our primary 
schools. It is hardly too much to say, that outside our cities 
and large towns there are scarcely any good schools for pri- 
mary instruction. The elements of drawing, geometry and 
arithmetic must be thoroughly taught to children, in order 
to the best results in technical schools for youth. Teachers 
too often have no aim beyond the passing hour, and aimless 
instruction is almost always fruitless. The able superintend- 
ent of the Boston schools, has lived to see his theory, which 
was scouted at first, verified and accepted by the most expe- 
rienced educators. This theory is, that the most important 
school is the primary, and that only those teachers should 
work in these who have been educated in the highest schools, 
and so discerned the true relation between the lowest and the 
highest. Our school is nearly of the same grade as the Ger- 
man Real Schule, though we aim at a more extended course ; 
but boys who enter the Real Schule have been taught free- 
hand drawing in the most thorough manner. There are some 
drawings of this sort to be seen in Prof. Gladwin's room, 
done by boys under thirteen years of age in the Saxon 
schools, Avhich are so spirited and accurate that older artists 
would not be ashamed to own them. Now drawing^ free- 
hand, perspective and geometrical, is the alphabet of all 
technical literature ; nothing can be worthily done without 
it. Next in importance is a knowledge of pure mathematics. 
Indeed these two elements are so closely connected, that it is 
hardly possible to conceive of one without including the other. 



But to acquire a competent knowledge of these branches, 
more time and patient application is needed, than boys, 
under existing forms, are willing to give. If boys have 
some ease in free-hand drawing, and have mastered the ele- 
ments of arithmetic, algebra and geometry, they may 
hope, with diligent application, to become proficient in en- 
gineering in three years. If not, the only alternative is to 
devote a year to preparatory study. Hence in this Institu- 
tion there will be a regular course of three years. The 
classes will be known as the Junior, Middle and Senior. 
Beside these classes there will be a Preparatory class. It is 
not likely that this class will be organized again. We hope, 
next year, to admit boys only to one of the regular classes 
of the Institute. The necessity for this class will disappear 
when the proper relation between this school and the others 
is established. The course of study will be as follows : In 
the Preparatory Class — Free-Hand Drawing, Geometrical 
and Perspective Drawing — till the shop is in operation, 
this class wnll devote twelve hours weekly to drawing ; — 
Arithmetic and Algebra, six hours weekly. The class will 
study Fractions, Percentage and Exchange, Ratio, Powers 
to the 3d degree, Equidifferent and Equimultiple Series, 
Factoring and Equations. Some knowledge of arithmetic 
is presupposed, and these topics w4ll be studied, not accord- 
ing to the order of any text-book, but according to the 
natural order of philosophic generalization. The class will 
also have daily drill in rapid arithmetical computation. 
Geometry — theorems concerning lines, angles, plain sur- 
faces, triangles and the circle, with practical application of the 
theorems in the solution of geometrical problems ; the 
French language. Physics, General Properties of bodies, 
Equilibrium, Forces and Pneumatics. This class will have 
frequent exercises in declamation. 

The regular Junior Class will have in Algebra, the topics 
requisite to a thorough knowledge of the advanced mathe- 
matics ; in Geometry, demonstration of theorems, solu- 
tion of problems, and the most important practical results 



84 

of geometrical investigation ; in Trigonometry, solution of 
plane triangles, reduction of trigonometrical formulae, prob- 
lems, elements of spherical trigonometry, surveying with 
chain and compass, plotting, calculation of areas, leveling, 
topographical mapping, use of the theodolite, triangulation 
and methods of the United States Coast Survey ; in Physics^ 
the elementary topics essential to a successful study of 
mechanics. It will be expected that this class will spend 
the month of July in field work, under the direction of the 
instructor. Reports of this work, accompanied by plans, 
will be required at the beginning of the fall session. They 
will study Inorganic Chemistry, with laboratory practice, 
Free-Hand, Geometrical and Perspective Drawing, and the 
French language. They will also have exercises in Decla- 
mation and English Composition as often as practicable. 

The Middle Class will have Analytical Geometry, De- 
scrij)tive Geometry, Perspective and Mechanical Drawing 
including Shadows, the Intersection of Surfaces, and the 
difierent methods of Mapping; the Calculus, with its 
more important practical applications ; Chemistry, organic 
and inorganic, and the French language, with general exer- 
cises as in the other classes. During the last half of the 
middle year, the class will be arranged in sections, accord- 
ing to the special course which each pupil will enter for the 
senior year, and the studies appropriate to each w^ill be 
pressed. 

The Senior Class will have general exercises in Mathe- 
matics, Physics and Language as a class, but the principal 
work will be in the special courses. For instance, those 
boys who aim at being mechanics will have more hours 
weekly in the shop than others and will study machine 
drawing and construction. They w^U also be expected to 
spend a part of the vacation in some kind of practical me- 
chanical work. Those who aim at beinof draughtsmen and 
architects will pay special attention in the shop to working 
in wood, to Architectural Drawinir, Modelino^ and Design- 
ing. They will have opportunity to study models and pho- 



85 

tographs of standard classical works. Those who have a 
taste for chemistry with its applications to the arts, especi- 
ally the manufacture of chemicals, dyeing, electro-magnet- 
ism and metallurgy, will work in the laboratory. Those 
who aim at mining engineering will be thoroughly fitted to 
enter the Freiberg Mining School. This, without doubt is 
the best place, and I might almost say, the only place in 
the world where Mining Engineering can be thoroughly 
learned. Theory and practice go hand in hand through the 
course. Every doctrine taught in the lecture room, is at 
once illustrated and explained, not by models and drawings 
of a mine, but by a mine. The simple location of this 
school, in the Freiberg mining region, gives it an incom- 
parable adviintage over any other. Add to this the fact that 
the Professors are among the most able chemists in the 
world as well as practical miners, and there is no room for 
question. To this end they will press the study of the 
German language, blow-pipe analysis and general laboratory 
practice, in connection with the study of civil engineering. 
Those who have no taste for any of these branches of knowl- 
edge will have a short course of instruction in Book-keep- 
ing, Political Economy and the Laws of Trade. The pecu- 
liar fitness of the course in Mechanical Engineering, for 
those who intend to study the Laws of Patents, must not be 
overlooked. 

The time which can be profitably spent in study and reci- 
tation, on an average, for boys under twenty and over 
twelve, has been fixed by careful observation, at seven 
hours a day. Apprentices in our machine shops work from 
nine to ten hours. The main aro^ument for the ei^ht hour 
system is that mechanics need more time for self-improve- 
ment. In our plan, since courses of intellectual discipline 
and of mechanical training are carried on simultaneously, it 
is but fair to suppose that the two will supplement each 
other ; so that, since the shop work will furnish the requisite 
amount of physical exercise, at least during the first two 
years, it is expected that at least eight hours a da}^ will be 



devoted to the work of the Institute by each pupil. Proba- 
bly more than this will be found practically necessar}'. 

Physical trainiug will uot be neglected, and all manly 
sports will be encouraged. Tt will be the aim of the in- 
structors to stimulate, by all possible means, the sense of 
self-dependence and self-respect in the pupils ; to teach 
them to love virtue for its own sake ; to watch with all so- 
licitude against the approach of evil, and, in short, to incul- 
cate those principles of conduct which underlie that excel- 
lent citizenship which is the glory of America. 

One prominent idea in the minds of the founders of this 
school, was to help young men who need and deserve help 
to make a start in life with that best of all capital, a good 
education. But they aim and wish to make it, like the 
other public schools of Massachusetts, good enough for the 
richest and none too good for the poorest. For this is, in 
all essentials, a public school. It tills a place hitherto un- 
occupied. It is the ardent wish of the trustees and the 
instructors to maintain the most cordial and intimate rela- 
tions with the public schools of Worcester County. Indeed 
it is only in that way that the best results can be attained. 
I am sure I am right in saying that it woidd be deemed a 
misfortune, by the founders and friends of this school, if it 
should come into collision with any other. From the very 
outset, through all the coming years, in all our aifairs, in- 
ternal and extei'ual, under every trial and under every 
vicissitude, "Let us have peace." 

Every new enterprise begs some indulgence at the outset. 
No school can grow to maturity in a day. Many boys have 
applied and been admitted, who should have remained in 
the Grammar or High School, but this is plainly unavoida- 
ble. As time goes on, we hope to raise the standard of ad- 
mission to the Institute, so that only boys who have been 
through the High School, can enter; so that the Institute 
shall stand in the same relation to the High School, in 
respect to technical education, that the college now holds in 
respect to classical. 



87 

Such in brief, is an outline of the plan of the Worcester 
Technical School. It makes no pretensions, but asks for 
recognition as an effort to diffuse, more widely, the princi- 
ples of sound learning and effective living. It is not, as 
has been supposed by some, a place where boys can be 
housed, fed and clothed at the expense of the Institution, a 
reform school for juvenile offenders, a pauper school, or an 
industrial school in the popular sense of that term, any 
more than it is an asylum for idiots or for aged and decayed 
punsters. It is not a place where boys can come to earn a 
living AND pick up such crumbs of knowledge as fall in 
their way from the master's table. One important idea in 
the plan will fail of accomplishment, to be sure, unless some 
boys do receive material aid as an incidental result of their 
own labor, according to the view above presented ; but the 
main design of this school is to make it an educational 
force ; to open the delights of learning to the mechanic and 
the manufacturer, as well as to the professional man ; to aid 
in giving practical expression to the maxim that knowledge 
is power. It is a place where i-esolute and intelligent boys 
can come to be educated for the life whi< h is before them. 

As Emerson says, it is impossible to state a truth strongly 
without apparent injustice to some other truth. This school 
is not a subtraction from established means of education, 
but an addition to them. Its friends recognize the place 
and the power of classical training, but they do not regard 
it as omnipresent or omnipotent. They seek to reach and 
help those for whom such training Jias no charms. They 
remember that in the dark ages — that time of blank dismay 
for humanity — classical learning was at its height, but it 
was only for a class. Everything for the thinker — nothing 
for the worker. They aim at helping on that grand equi- 
poise of intelligence, when, behind the arm that smites the 
anvil or guides the plow, there shall dwell a soul tranquil- 
ized by the same philosophy and stirred by the same high 
hopes that guide the pen of the scholar, or breathe inspi- 
ration into the words of the orator. When, as evening 



88 

comes on, the manufacturer shall leave his looms, the mer- 
chant his counting room, and the mechanic his workshop, 
and each in the quiet of his home, share with the scholar, 
communion with the great and good of past ages ; and so 
find, gradually accumulating in his soul, those stores of hid- 
den wealth which are the solace of adversity, the comfort 
of retirement, and the strength of declining years. 

Able and accomplished instructors have been appointed 
the departments of mathematics and drawing, but even 
with this strong support, I should shrink in dismay from 
the heavy burden which must devolve upon the Principal of 
the Institute, were I not assured that in the sound judg- 
ment, liberality and forbearance of the trustees, I can find 
help in every need. With such supporters, and with such 
fellow laborers, one can face without alarm, the most ap- 
palling difiiculties. In fact, gentlemen of the trustees, you 
are the upper, we, the lower house, and must cordially co- 
operate in securing the highest success of this little repub- 
lic. In what nobler work could we engage ? What more 
exhilarating prospect could allure us than the better edu- 
cation of the boys who are eventually to be pillars of the 
state. 

In the mountain region of Germany there is a strange 
sight which most travelers see. It is a phenomenon of 
fearful portent to the superstitious villagers. The traveler 
is led by the awe-struck peasant guide, towards evening, to 
a certain secluded spot, whence he takes in at a single 
glance an extensive and beautiful valley. But he is startled 
as he gazes on the quiet scene, to see a human figure of mar- 
velous size stretched at full length on the ground. This is 
the Giant of the Hartz Mountains. The figure is perfect. 
For an instant the dreams of Homer are realized. There 
in very truth, is the Titan, and quite near may be troops of 
nj^mphs and Dryad girls. So perfect is the illusion that the 
beholder can hardly be made to realize that the giant is 
himself. The slant rays of the setting sun are so disposed 
by the surrounding hills as to throw his own image in mi- 



89 

raculous proportions, into the valley below him. Here let 
us find a figure of our work. The traveler is the boy — the 
giant, the man of the future. We see only the caprices of 
the boy — the future will see and feel the matured power of 
the giant. It is not the boy we are training, but the giant. 
In the freshness of morning, through the heat of noon, let 
us toil at our work, patient amid discouragements, charita- 
ble towards the thousand faults of boyhood, full of faith 
and hope and love, and as evening comes on, we shall see, 
athwart the far-stretching valleys of the future, w^hich our 
own feet shall never tread-, the image of the giant, and his 
name shall be Great Heart. 



The President invited Hon. James B. Blake, mayor of the City of 
Worcester, ex-officio and personally a very important member of the 
Board of Trustees, to express the welcome of the city to the youngest 
public school established within its borders. Hon. Mr. Blake responded 
as follows : 



Mr. President: — It is with mingled feelings of gratitude 
and pride that I rise to respond to your call to speak a 
word of salutation in behalf of our city ; gratitude in the 
thought, that this school is the result of individual liberality, 
and pride, that by the generosity of our own citizens, its 
location is fixed within these precincts, and we are enabled 
to welcome it to-day to its place in that great educational 
structure, which has been established by the wise foresight 
of those gone before, is prized and sustained by the pres- 
ent, and to be cherished and continued through the coming 
time. 

The character of a people is so forcibly and truthfully il- 
lustrated by the institutions established in their midst, that 
I consider the opening of this institute thus freely to our 
youth, a matter of public congratulation. In the ancient 
world, temples were erected to the heathen gods and conse- 
crated by sensual rites and depressing sacrifices ; amphithea- 
tres were built, where beastly offerings were made 'mid the 

12 



90 

exultant shouts of a grateful populace ; and by the unre- 
quited labor of thousands huge pyramids were constructed 
to immortalize the memory of kings long since forgotten ; 
each typifying the civilization of its time ; and because this 
school of special training is to typify and represent this 
people, and transmit to the generations yet to come, the sen- 
timent and culture and enlightened liberality of the citizens 
of Worcester of to-day, I hail with peculiar pride the incep- 
tion of an institution so free in all its opportunities, so 
broad in every department of useful learning, and so prac- 
tical in its every detail of system. 

I rejoice that the time has come when a good educa- 
tion must be practical and beneficent ; and that education 
will be the best and most beneficent which shall be the most 
practical ; an education which in its development of science 
and art and skillful application, must, as a result, dignify 
labor and lighten the burdens of toil ; and I believe, Sir, 
that the school which attains the great desideratum of prac- 
tical education will ever take rank among the noblest insti- 
tutions of the age, and most fitly and fully answer the aspi- 
rations of democratic America. 

The established basis of this school must, in its system, 
commend itself to the judgment of our people, and must 
likewise meet the wants of a large class in our community ; 
and I deem it a matter of congratulation that while the di- 
recting power is vested in a board whose members are the 
embodiment of that large experience, culture and wisdom 
which is the crown of ripened age, and a guarantee of pres- 
ent stability and future success, the beginning of our Insti- 
tute has been entrusted to young men ; that this school, the 
ideas of whose foundation are to work out so much practical 
good in the years to come, is not to be tied or hampered by 
obsolete prejudices, but that young men, bringing to their 
work freshness of heart and energy of brain, are to impart 
learning, inspired by the magnetic currents of that enthusi- 
asm which belongs alone to young life, and which, in its 
stimulating power, must give assurance of efiective result 



91 

and positive, prosperous issues, making our institute a liv- 
ing power in her very youth. I would also heartily welcome 
the plan to be adopted here, which enables the student to 
select such a course of study as shall be suited to his taste 
and capabilities, and in a broad and liberal manner offers to 
the son of the poor the same advantages as one more highly 
favored, makes his special study the equal of any other 
study, and makes him the peer of any student. 

Well may our community be proud of this institution 
which in conception and character is an anomoly in the 
state ; no legislative grant or city appropriation is repre- 
sented here, but these acres from street to street, this build- 
ing from foundation stone to its highest turret, and the 
beautiful structure, its companion, with its furnishings and 
appurtenances, are the free-will offering and gift of the en- 
lightened liberality of our own citizens ; and the means by 
which these doors are forever to open so freely to our 
youth is the gift of one who has consecrated the accumula- 
tions of a long life of industry to this great enterprise ; an 
enterprise which in its development will ever stand as a 
living monument of his generous benefactions, bearing the 
inscription of a grateful appreciation to be kept green and 
renewed by each passing generation. And while our city 
can point with pride to this institution of free learning, may 
the citizens ever remember with gratitude what history will 
faithfully record, the names of Boynton, Salisbury and 
Washburn as among its greatest benefactors. 

By virtue of official position, in accordance with the 
terms of the gift, it has been my privilege for the past three 
years to attend the meetings of the trustees of the fund, 
and to know the pains-taking labor which has been rendered 
by the board, in the construction of this building and the 
detail of operation which necessarily precedes the establish- 
ment of such an institution. In justice, therefore, to the 
gentlemen of the board of Trustees, 1 desire to express, 
thus publicly, a due apppreciation of the voluntary service 
thus rendered, and in l)ehalf of the citizens of Worcester 
to pj-eseut to you their thanks. 



92 

Mr. President, let us heartily welcome the opening of 
this new avenue to learning, and may the blessing of Heaven 
give effect to its largest anticipations ; and firm in the faith 
that the growth of practicable knowledge is attainable only 
through development of sound principles and pure morals, 
let us not doubt that by the liberality of the generous bene- 
factors who have founded this institution, a light will be set 
upon this hill which will not be hid, but will be kindled and 
go forth from these walls, now dedicated to the Free Insti- 
tute of Industrial Science, which will guide our children and 
our children's children in the path of intelligence and indus- 
try ; that its fruits may be rich and abundant, ever meeting 
the highest interests of the whole community ; and that 
here the tree of knowledge may never be dis-uuited from 
the tree of life, but by the union of theory and practice, 
cause and effect will be the complement and crown of this 
system of popular education, doing its full part in bearing 
up and sustaining an imperishable fabric of that truly prac- 
tical knowledge which is the basis of all power. 

To the board of trustees, to whom is committed the re- 
sponsibility of direction and management of this institution, 
to the corps of teachers who may be selected to administer 
within these walls, and to all and every instrument and sup- 
port, I would pledge you, in behalf of this municipality, its 
present and continued co-operation and interest. 

At 1 o'clock P. M., the President stated that he was authorized by the 
ladies and gentlemen of Worcester, to request the invited guests and all 
friends of the Institute who were present, to enter the adjoining hall 
and partake of a collation. To accommodate this, there was a recess 
of one hour. In the central hall, after a blessing had been asked by 
Rev. Mr. Pervear, the company enjoj^'ed an ample collation, as agreea- 
ble to the eye as the taste and enlivened by the conversation of the 
graceful and assiduous hosts. 



93 

At 2 P. M., the company returned to the chapel and the President 
read two letters, unexpectedlj^ put into his hands. One whs from Wm. 
D. Fenno, Esq.. presenting a handsome Clock, manufactured by How- 
ard. The other letter, from Messrs. Wood, Light & Co., ofiered one of 
their well known and superor Lathes of fifteen inch sweep and six feet 
long, for the use of the work-shop. These appropriate and valuable 
o'ifts from those who know and exhibit tiie advantag-es of a good me- 
chanical education, were thankfully received as a great encouragement 
and aid to the school. 

The President then introduced his Excellency. Governor Bullock, 
who spoke as follows ; 

Mr. President: — At this stage of the exercises it only 
remains for me to unite with others in cono^ratulating- the 
friends of the Sehool of Industrial Science on having reach- 
ed the degree of success which is expressed by these cere- 
monies of inauguration. Though the beneficent purposes 
of the school are yet to be accomplished, the liberality and 
vigor which have established these material foundations and 
superstructures, in accordance with plans so comprehensive, 
are a guaranty that no part of the original design shall fail 
for want of means or public spirit. In addition to the en- 
dowment furnished by the original founder, the amount 
contributed by others has been rarely if ever equaled in 
this section of the country in any similar undertaking and 
in an equal period of time. To the first donor, Mr. Bojai- 
ton, and to all those citizens who have come forward to make 
his donation certain and successful, — of whom two, Mr. 
Salisbury and Mr. Washburn, ought to be especially men- 
tioned and at all times remembered, — not only this particu- 
lar community, but the people of the whole Commonwealth, 
are under lasting obligation. 

The memorv of o^reat benefactions ou^i^ht to be endurino-. 
I sometimes think that our familiarity with the quickly 
accumulated fortunes, and the almost lavishment of benevo- 
lence of the last few years, has made us too insusceptible 
to the common duty of gratitude for the munificence which 
abounds in our community. Some of us remember with 
what sensation it was promulgated over the country, only a 



94 

little more than twenty years ago, that Mr. Abbott Law- 
rence had made a gift of fifty thousand dollars to establish 
the Scientific School at Cambridge. It happened to me, 
about that time, to be at the same hotel with him in the city 
of New York. It also occurred that the President of the 
United States was then present, on a visit to the metropolis. 
An intelligent and public spirited citizen of Tennessee came 
to me and said : " I desire to be introduced to Mr. Abbott 
Lawrence, of your State ; for I would rather take the hand 
that can open with a donation of fifty thousand dollars in the 
cause of Education, than to shake hands with the President." 
And now here, in the retired abodes of the rural County of 
Worcester, we have three men, who have not been hunted 
out, but who have come forth of their own volition, each of 
whom have given for that noble cause a much larger sum 
than the one I have just mentioned. In cordial sympa- 
thy with the prayer of Dr. Sweetser, who opened the 
exercises of consecration this morning, we ought to be 
thankful to Him who is the disposer not only of events but 
of the hearts of men that produce events, that we live in a 
society were such things as these are performed. 

The institution which we open for use, to-day, is a stage in 
advance of all considerable attempts which have been hither- 
to made, in Massachusetts, for the promotion of the study of 
what we call the natural and physical sciences. The first of 
such efforts resulted in the establishment of the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology, at Cambridge. Devoted to the study 
of the whole of living existence, of all orders of being, 
from man through every gradation to the feeblest vital or- 
ganism that can be discovered, it is a monument to the 
interest which the State has manifested in one department 
of this general class of studies. It has been endowed with 
half a million of dollars, coming about equally from the 
public treasury and private citizens. In the hands of its 
great master, Mr. Agassiz — I am half inclined to call him 
the great magician of nature — it is helping into world-wide 
lame not only him but the Commonwealth of his adoption. 



95 

But in many particulars that is a school of abstract stucl}^, 
as distinguished from that which is palpably practical and 
in immediate relation with the producing powers and capaci- 
ties of men. The two only other leading institutions we 
have in the domain of physical science — the Scientitic 
School of Harvard University and the Institute of Tech- 
nology at Boston — have aimed to supply this deficiency by 
bringing what are termed the useful arts into profound 
study and direct application to the social progress of our 
time. Of the Institute of Technology I have a high appre- 
ciation. In my judgment it aims to meet the exigencies of 
this age with a broader scope than any other institution 
that has been established in the United States. Passing 
through its rooms, witnessing the fiicilities appropriated to 
the pursuit of mathematics, design and drawing, descend- 
ing to the laboratory and beholding the young men apply- 
ing their own thought to actual experiment with the free 
use of water, steam and gas light, all the elements and all 
the apparatus, any man in the visit of an hour must be sat- 
isfied that an advanced position not realized before has l)een 
attained in the ever widenius: field of education. But the 
school whose doors are now thrown open to swing free on 
this eminence, is designed, as I suppose, to be devoted 
not less than the Boston institute, to the elementary studies 
which precede, accompany and stimulate the development of 
the useful arts, while besides it comprises the department 
of practical mechanism which has not as yet been attached 
to the former. That, I apprehend, may be found to be the 
right arm of this institution. Here is a building which is 
dedicated to the pursuit of the wonder-working forces and 
agencies of mechanic art, and which is to be supplied with 
the conveniences, and, so to speak, with the temptations that 
shall entice the thought, ingenuity, taste and aptitude of a 
young man into acquaintance with the processes which dis- 
tinguish, as characteristics, this mechanical age in which we 
live. Here we are to have not only the abstract instruc- 
tion — the research, reflection and contemplation of the stu- 



96 

dent, ranging over all authorities and theories in the broad 
field of mechanical powers and combinations — but we are to 
have also the illustration at hand — the thing of beauty, as it 
lay in the imagination, is to be wrought out before the eye 
of the student and by his own fingers — the golden chain is 
here connecting theory with practice, to find which so many 
men in all the callings of industry have passed years of time 
between the school of their study and the shop of their 
success. He was a wise man who connected this depart- 
ment with the institution ; and he is the generous benefactor 
who supplies and supports it. 

Mr. President, this school comes to us at the right time, 
but none too soon, in aid and furtherance of the drift of our 
civilization. Intelligence, acting through the useful arts, is 
the vital principle of modern civilized societ3^ The me- 
chanician is now master of the situation. Those commu- 
nities are now foremost in wealth, in culture and in all the 
methods of moral influence, which are foremost in the de- 
velopment and use of the arts. They conquer in war, and 
they rule in time of peace. According to statements made 
by approved English writers several years ago, and making 
proper allowance for the increase since, the spinning ma- 
chinery of Great Britain, tended perhaps by three or four 
hundred thousand workmen, produces more yarn than could 
have been produced by four times the entire population of 
the kino^dom if usin2: the one thread wheel ; and the amount 
of work now performed by machinery in England is proba- 
bly equivalent to that of the whole population of the globe 
if performed by direct labor. Striking and almost incredi- 
ble as such statements appear, they are at this moment 
measurably in process of reproduction in some of the States 
of New England, and in none more conspicuously than in 
our own State. According to the last official tables of our 
industry, published two years since, the annual product of 
values in Massachusetts was more than seven hundred mil- 
lion dollars — or nearly two and a half millions for every 
working day in the year. I allow something for the infla- 



97 

tion of war values, but any excess from that source is prob- 
ably not greater than the amount of production overlooked 
in making the returns, and therefore I take the footing to 
be a fair one. Now I need not say that this quickening and 
awakening of the industries — this type of the modern civ- 
ilization — comes in a great proportion from intelligence 
working by machinery. It is the intellect, the reason, the 
thought, the imagination, the taste of our men, and of our 
women as well, working through the thousand-handed en- 
gineries and agencies which the God of nature has placed in 
their control and inspired them to employ. Our own city 
of Worcester is a remarkable example of the improvement 
in these arts. Having had some opportunities for making 
the comparison, I can in all sincerity declare that I do not 
know the community in this country which leads a more 
busy, intelhgent and happy life. I do not know what the 
papers of the Patent Office Department at Washington, 
might show, but it has occurred to me frequeutly, reading 
the current lists of patented inventions, that, with the ex- 
ception of four or five of the very large cities, not another 
in the United States receives in the course of a year a 
larger number of letters patent than this inland town of 
forty thousand souls. The genius of the place seems in- 
spired for the mission of the arts. The mind of the popu- 
lation seems aroused and exalted in the pursuit of the 
greatest attainable improvement in the condition of man- 
kind. 

Now, Mr. President, we have only to take the modern 
situation as we find it — a people "pushing things," as 
the phrase now is, not so much by arms, as by arts — 
carrjdng their conquests over the globe by their wits — 
and to apply ourselves to the duties of furnishing the best 
education which this popular condition requires. We have 
reached a definite and established status, as a Common- 
wealth, for which specific policies and adaptations of edu- 
cation must be amply provided. And this work of pub- 
lic obligation has only begun. In the five chartered lite- 

13 



98 

rary colleges of the State there are, I suppose, some ten 
or twelve hundred students. But with the exception of 
very few who will take to engineering scarcely any of this 
large number will apply and continue their study and cul- 
ture in those pursuits to which I have alluded and which 
constitute the texture and fabric of our social organization 
and power. The two institutions, which I have before 
mentioned, are instructing probably less than two hundred 
and fifty of our young men. The school which we dedicate 
to-day ought speedily to double this number. The want is 
imminent. The condition which has produced the want has 
been advancing upon us with rapid stride during the last 
thirty years. The whole social organism, all the forces and 
activities, the spirit of our age, the life of the State, are 
flowing in channels which, a generation ago, were too feeble 
to awaken the public attentiou. But it is so no longer. 
The directors and masters of education, the patrons and 
benefactors of our time, have been aroused to an appreciation 
of the necessity. That which is needed is not an under-esti- 
mating or depreciation of the schools of classical learning. 
Theses and addresses have been published in the last few 
years which have discussed the benefits received from the 
colleges in a manner most unwise and unfair. And in my 
judgment he is not in proper accord with the temper of this 
era, any more than with the temper of the past, who mis- 
leads the intelligence of the people by teaching them to un- 
dervalue the higher seminaries of classical learning. They 
will still live and prosper, and enrich the parish, the town, 
the halls of justice and legislation, all the circles of life and 
all the classes of mankind, with their myriad shaded attain- 
ment and culture, their rich and exalted thought drawn 
from the treasuries of past centuries, their flexible taste, 
their refined sentiment, their trained virtue and their im- 
perishable religion. Let no man assail the colleges of Mas- 
sachusetts. Their field is the world. But there is quite as 
much space left for the schools of industrial and physical 
science as they can occupy. We must maintain them be- 



99 

side and in addition to the others ; we must support them 
for the specialties of our active, producing, consuming civ- 
ilization. In sympathy with the objects of those other 
seminaries they should have in common with the others the 
base of the same Christian religion which has upheld them ; 
the same patriotic tone and purpose ; the same elementary 
studies which precede and prepare for the classification of 
men in the various occupations of life. Beyond these 
things, they are designed to educate — in the literal signifi- 
cation of that word, to lead forth, to bring out the inventive 
genius of our young men. From the great invention of 
James Watt, which has changed the whole face of society, 
down throuo^h the lonj? line of inventions now innumerable 
but all working together in the vast complication of the 
world's industry, you find comparatively few which have 
proceded from the sons of universities. They have cropped 
out from humble cottages and secluded o^arrets. There 
have been in times past no schools for this class of pro- 
ducers and benefactors. Here we have the school at 
length ; and all around us, in the midst of us, we have the 
material for crowding its seats. In the application of ele- 
mentary mathematics to practical art ; in the broad depart- 
ment of design and drawing ; in facilities for enabling the 
student to seize each happy thought as it crosses his imagi- 
nation and to chain it in captivity by his own senses and by 
the agencies of fire, steam, electricity and all the metals 
which minister in his hands ; in mutual comparisons and 
suggestions among kindred minds laboring side by side in 
the common work-shop of nature ; in the stimulation which 
shall here be communicated to the illimitable capacity of 
the mind, for modifying, improving, enlarging, intensify- 
ing all discoveries yet made in the realm of utilized skill 
and art ; in sending forth, one after another, great and 
small, new forms and combinations which shall facilitate and 
cheapen the ways of life, from the work of the engine that 
traverses the sea, or keeps a thousand men and women at 
work under a single roof, to the humblest cooking of a cot- 



100 

tage dinner ; in simplifying and saving labor by devising 
new modes of dividing it ; in pointing out new uses of 
economy in the working operations of the mechanical forces, 
wasting less and consuming l^ss without profit ; in produc- 
ing the most benign effects on the moral and social relations 
by material means, raising the standard of comfortable liv- 
ing, increasing the quantity of leisure time for mental im- 
provement, and promoting the progress of man in all the 
fields of earthly service and enjoyment — this school and its 
associate schools shall contribute their part in perpetuating 
for our Commonwealth the respect and blessing of all 
wherever freedom and intelligence exist. And I deem it a 
privilege to be permitted to unite with you in committing it 
to its work, and in commending it to the patronage of our 
fellow-citizens and to the favor of Divine Providence. 



The President alluded to the regret that would be felt that Mr. John 
Boynton and Mr. Ichabod Washburn, the founders of the two depart- 
ments of the school, the scientific and the mechanical, were not permit- 
ted to be here to-day. Mr. Boynton died on the 25th of March, 1867, 
and the health of Mr. Washburn is not now strong enough to endure 
the fatigue of attending these exercises. In the absence of these bene- 
factors it was pleasant to call on their friends who knew their pur- 
poses and had been consulted as to their accomplishment. As one of 
their friends the President introduced Rev. Dr. Sweetser, who spoke as 
follows : 



In the month of January, 1865, Mr. David Whitcomb in- 
timated to me that a friend of his, whose name he could not 
mention, desired to appropriate to some useful and benevo- 
lent purpose the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. He 
wished to be advised as to the object and the best method 
of bestowing this sum of money. He had determined to 
seek the counsel of Hon. Emory Washburn, and at Mr. 
Whitcomb's suggestion, I was requested to act with Mr. 
Washburn. The subject was submitted to us in a very in- 
definite form, the only direction given being that the money 
should be devoted to the promotion of education in the 
County of Worcester. The leading idea communicated to 



101 

us was that the donor wished to make the avails of his 
industry a permanent means of aiding the young in obtain- 
ing advantages and privileges in preparing for active life 
which had been beyond his reach. He desired to be ad- 
vised in regard to the form and method by which he might 
most successfully secure his chosen object. The matter 
was immediately taken in hand, and Mr. Washburn and 
myself had several interviews and consultations, in some of 
which Mr. Whitcomb was present, to represent the donor. 
The design was laid before President Hill, of Harvard Col- 
lege, by Mr. Washburn, and his suggestions received. A 
very full interview was had by us with Hon. Joseph White, 
Secretary of the Board of Education, in his rooms in Bos- 
ton, in which the general plan of an educational institution 
for practical instruction was discussed. 

It was especially enjoined upon us to take every precau- 
tion against the waste or perversion of the fund ; to guard it 
against ever becoming an instrument of sectarianism, and so 
to arrange the whole as to accomplish by it the desire of 
the donor to bestow a generous gift upon the community 
for the benefit of coming generations. 

It was stipulated that the Institution should be located in 
the city of Worcester, provided that land and money suffi- 
cient for erecting suitable buildings, should be seasonably 
contributed by the inhabitants. Otherwise it was under- 
stood that suggestions had already been made which would 
determine the bestowment of the benefaction in another 
direction. Upon these instructions the plan of the institu- 
tion, substantially as it has been incorporated, was drawn 
up and received the approbation of the donor, and was 
by him adopted and made a legal instrument by his signa- 
ture. 

These several steps occupied much time, and it was 
not until the 6th of March that a letter was directed to 
gentlemen in the city of Worcester, informing them of the 
proposition to establish such an institution here. About 
thirty gentlemen were addressed, and after favorable re- 



102 

spouses had been received, a meeting was called at the office 
of Mr. Hoar, ^yhere the subject was more fully presented 
and a subscription paper opened, commencing with many 
generous contributions, and resulting, as is well known, in 
raising the necessary fund for the erection of the building. 
Subsequently several propositions were made of land for a 
site, the most appropriate and generous of which was that 
of the lot upon which the buildings stand. 

As soon as circumstances warranted, an act of incorpora- 
tion was applied for and obtained, and the Worcester 
County Free Institute of Industrial Science had a legal and 
corporate existence. Up to about this period the name of 
the munificent public benefactor had been withheld from the 
community by his special desire, but was at length an- 
nounced as John Boynton, Esq., of Athol, formerly of 
Templeton. It is not necessary that I should go into fur- 
ther detail in regard to the progress of the undertaking. 
The facts have already been with carefulness and accuracy 
presented to you. But there is one circumstance which I 
think should be recorded in honor of the magnanimity as 
well as the public spirit of one of the munificent and most 
devoted patrons of this enterprise. 

The morning after the issue of letters to citizens of Wor- 
cester, Hon. Ichabod Washburn called to converse in refer- 
ence to the subject of the communication. He stated that 
he had not made up his mind in reference to the proposition, 
but must take time to think of it. He could not say 
whether he would give aid to the plan or not. I saw at 
once that he was much disturbed, and I readily conjectured 
the cause. Eight or ten years before this time we had con- 
versed together in regard to the great need there was of a 
school for the scientific education of mechanics. He had 
experienced many difficulties and hindrances in his business 
on account of not having had instruction in the fundamental 
principles of Mechanics and Chemistry. He thought a 
school might be established in connection with the Me- 
chanics' Association for giving such instruction, and that 



103 

funds for the purpose could be easily procured among the 
prosperous mechanics and manufacturers of Worcester. At 
his request I drew up a plan for such a School, which was 
submitted to President Sears, of Brown University, for- 
merly Secretary of the Board of Education in this State, and, 
I believe, to some other gentlemen. The subject was pro- 
posed to individuals in the city, who looked upon it favora- 
bly. But before any thing eflectual was done a financial 
crisis occurred, that rendered the procuring of money for 
the undertaking hopeless, and the project was suspended. 

This project Mr. Washburn designed to carry out by de- 
voting to it a portion of his own property ; and the occa- 
sion of his hesitancy was whether he should abandon his 
cherished design of being the founder of such an Institution, 
and come in to aid an effort already commenced by an un- 
known individual. The result you all know. Magnanimity 
and generosity prevailed, and Mr. Washburn decided to 
adopt this Institution as the object of his bounty, and to 
bestow his munificent appropriations in aid of its establish- 
ment. 

The plan submitted to him contained the leading features 
of the plan of this Institution. The experience and the 
practical mind of Mr. Washburn led him to give prominence 
to the Machine Shop as an invaluable part of the arrange- 
ment. And this idea he secured by proposing at once to 
erect and equip a shop, in connection with the Institute, at 
his own expense. His interest has also been manifested in 
securing to the corporation fifty thousand dollars, to be 
paid at a future day, the interest of which is immediately 
available in aid of the mechanical department, and as a 
means of assistance to deserving apprentices whose circum- 
stances require it. 

This brief statement will serve to show how this desisfn 
originated and has been brought to its present auspicious 
condition. Two industrious and prosperous mechanics, 
having, independently of each other, cherished the purpose 
of being the benefactors of this community in future years, 



104 

were, in the Providence of God, brought to combine their 
means and to co-operate together in laying the foundation 
of a school of practical science, which, we trust, will prove 
not only an ornament to the city, but a long-continued 
source of substantial benefit to the country and the com- 
monwealth. And they, with the citizens of Worcester, 
whose contributions secured the location of the institute 
amongst us, and whose gifts and efforts have increased the 
funds to an amount already so encouraging and substantial, 
will well deserve the encomiums and the grateful remem- 
brance of posterity. 



The President welcomed the presence of Professor William P. Atkin- 
son, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a school whose 
success is a guide and an encouragement in the course which is here 
undertaken, and invited Prof. Atkinson to address the company. Prof. 
Atkinson said ; 



Mr, President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I am taken by surprise by the call upon me to address 
you, as I had no expectation when I came up here of being 
anything more than a listener on this interesting occasion ; 
and I cannot but regret that indisposition and the inclemency 
of the weather have prevented our Institution from being 
represented here to-day, as it could have been so much 
more ably and worthily, by our respected President. I can- 
not, however, refuse your invitation. Sir, to say a word to 
this audience, and to hold out, as I do most cordially and 
heartily, the right hand of fellowship to this new Institu- 
tion, in behalf of the sister Institution with which I have 
the honor of being connected. Founded for similar objects, 
and anticipating you but a very little while in a similar edu- 
cational experiment, it is a pleasure and a satisfaction to 
welcome so soon, and under such happy auspices, these new 
laborers in the wide and inexhaustible field which lies open 
before us. There is no fear that in that field there will be 
too many laborers. Not if from some commanding emi- 



105 

neiice such a school as this looked down upon every city in 
our land, would there be any danger that the advantages of 
an education like that here offered to the youth of Worces- 
ter, would be too widely spread, or furnished in too lavish 
abundance. 

You will not expect me. Sir, to go over again the ground 
so ably traversed by the speakers of the morning. Let me 
only say, differing as I may from them in particulars, how 
cordially I agree with the main doctrines laid down in the 
addresses. It has long been my conviction that the jealousy 
shown in many quarters in regard to that extended study of 
physical science which characterizes these modern times, as 
if it were hostile to religion, is idle and absurd. The 
deeper study of the laws that govern Creation lead men to 
doubt of a Creator ! To state such a doctrine is to refute 
it. To be a Student of Science, is to be a loyal adherent of 
Truth, wherever it may lead, and I will never believe that 
the genuine effect of the pursuit of truth, as unfolded in 
the laws that govern the material Universe, can be to falsify 
the testimony of all that is deepest in man's spiritual nature. 
The world of matter and the world of spirit cannot so con- 
tradict each other. 

Neither do I any more believe. Sir, in that antagonism 
which in some quarters has sprung up between the adhe- 
rents of literature, on the one hand, and those of science 
on the other, considered in the light of instruments of edu- 
cation. There can be no real antagonism between them. 
You might as well ask, if I may use the homely illustration, 
which is the better half of a pair of scissors, as ask which is 
better, literature or science in education. I have a right to 
speak on this point, Sir, for I am a teacher of literature in 
a school of science, and not a day passes but what, in my 
intercourse with my students, I am made to feel the abso- 
lute necessity of the literary element in a scientific educa- 
tion, just as I believe that the absence of the scientific ele- 
ment from a literary education is what has heretofore 

struck so niuch of it with barrenness and blight. Both are 

14 



106 

needful, Sir, and one as needful as the other, to a true and 
symmetrical development of the mind. The discovery 
which marks the education of modern time is this — h t 
they may be mingled in more than one proportion. The 
expanding wants of modern society, the varied employ- 
ments of modern life, and that vast expansion of modern 
physical science which accompanies and renders them possi- 
ble, have wholly altered the relations which different mental 
pursuits bear to each other. On the one hand new and 
vast fields of thought have come into view, unknown to the 
thinkers of ancient times, and on the other, the occupations 
based upon them have risen in dignity and importance ; and 
for these, new educational instrumentalities must be pro- 
vided. In this free country where we believe in men as 
men, and not in the superiority of classes, and where all 
honest labor is honored, we look to see the time when all 
true educations shall be counted equally " liberal," and a lib- 
erally educated merchant or a liberally educated mechanic, 
or chemist, or farmer, or engineer, shall be counted no 
more of a phenomenon than a liberally educated physician, 
clergyman or lawyer. For that end we must multiply and 
we must vary our schools, and the old monopoly of one 
narrow and antiquated curriculum must give way to the 
ever expanding wants of modern civilization. But it does 
not follow that the scholar's liberal education is to cease 
because the practical man's liberal education has begun, or 
because science has been neglected in the past, that therefore 
literature and language are to be neglected in the future. 
Rather do I expect to see the study of language and litera- 
ture itself gather new life from the impulse given it through 
the spirit of modern scientific methods. 

And let me say here how cordially I endorse the doctrine 
laid down by Prof. Woodman, that the course of study of 
these new schools must be no less thorough and disciplinary 
than that of the old, and that on this point we must stoutly 
withstand that popular prejudice which looks upon such 
schools as mere shops where a boy can go to be equipped 



107 

with an outfit of empirical experience for the pursuit of 
some bread-winning employment. No technical education 
is good that is not firmly based upon a foundation of sci- 
entific principles, well learned and thoroughly digested, 
and no Scientific School is worthy of the name, that does 
not give an education whose disciplinary value shall be 
equal to that of any other training. As the pioneers in 
this movement, it must be our task to withstand the popu- 
lar prejudice on this subject, until experience shall show, 
as it surely will, that a true scientific education is equal to 
any other in true dignity and value. 

You will expect me, I know. Sir, to give some report of 
the success of that experiment, resembling your own in so 
many features, in which we are engaged in Boston. Less 
than four years ago the Massachusetts Institute of Technolo- 
gy began with a small class of young men, in hired rooms, 
in Summer street. Last June, sixteen of those young men 
graduated from the stately building which is now the home 
of the Institute, and before the vacation was over every one 
of them was in active employment in his profession ; and a 
month ago seventy-six new students, of the average age of 
seventeen and a half years, were admitted to complete the 
full number of classes. The Institute now numbers one 
hundred and seventy-two pupils. We have not blown any 
trumpets. Sir. We did not need to do so, even if we had 
been inclined. But we thought that the best advertisement 
of ourselves would be successive classes of well-instructed 
students, prepared to do faithful work, each in his chosen 
calling. If we turn out engineers whose bridges tumble 
down, we must tumble down ; if their bridges stand, we 
also hope to stand. At first I believe the public adopted 
the idea that we were to serve as a sort of hospital for 
incurables, where young men, not quite clever enough to 
profit by a real education, might come to get what modicum 
they could of an inferior sort of training. I believe the 
public will not be long of that mind, but will find that there 
is as much room in a scientific school for the thorough and 



108 

manly training of the faculties as in any other institution of 
learning. And in regard to the Institute of Technology in 
particular, I believe the impression is beginning to prevail 
that it is easier for a lazy fellow to get into it than to stay 
in it. So it must be, Sir, if science is to claim her rights 
as a leading element in the education of the future. We 
must not accept for her the servile office which a low utili- 
tarian philosophy is too ready to assign. We must be jeal- 
ous of her dignity, and by maintaining a high standard, and 
teaching by none but truly philosophic ways, must show 
that her power of developing the mind is not less than that 
of any other instrumentality. It is well developed scientific 
minds that we must produce, not empirics, equipped w^ith a 
little practical dexterity. 

I have said that Literature cannot be neglected. The 
modern science of Comparative Philology is fast revolution- 
izing the methods of linguistic teaching, and the rich litera- 
tures of modern languages have entirely changed the relation 
of the ancient classics to modern education. The world owes 
the latter a vast debt, and they remain as beautiful as ever, 
but they can never again be what they once were, the sole 
instruments of linguistic training. A scientific man may 
well afibrd to be ignorant of Greek, for he has no time to 
study it. He can not afford to be ignorant of French or 
German, and he should be ashamed to be ignorant of his 
mother tongue and its noble literature. He too is a citizen of 
a free country, called to take a part in the government under 
which he lives, and, if that country is to remain free, it can 
only be by all its citizens understanding the great principles 
of justice and right which underlie all free constitutions ; 
and living in a day and generation where the great problems 
which agitate men's minds are social and economic prob- 
lems, he is not properly educated unless he knows something 
of social and economic laws. There is no fear, Sir, but 
literary subjects enough may be found to claim the attention 
of every scientific student, and our friends who have charge 
of the instruction of this school will have to do a great deal 



109 

of hard thinking before they can arrive at that proper bal- 
ance and adjnstment of the various s'tudies most suitable to 
the wants and capacities of the pupils in their charge. 

Because I believe, as a student of educational subjects, 
that such movements as the one here inaugurated, to-day, 
are in the direction clearly pointed out by the movement of 
the times and the pressing demands of this new nation, I 
look to see an influence from them that shall extend far be- 
yond the walls of any particular institution, and re-act with 
powerful eiFect upon the whole education of the country. 
The public school system of this country is the noblest in 
its general plan that was ever devised by any age or any 
nation ; but I think that no one who has had occasion to ex- 
amine it in its present stage of development can say that it 
is yet adequate to meet the real wants of the people. Com- 
mon schools are the corner-stone of our free institutions, 
our chief safeguard against that anarchy and lawlessness 
which are everyvvdiere and in all times the companions of 
ignorance. Now the character of the elementary schools is 
largely influenced by that of the higher institutions of learn- 
ing. From the university and the college and the scientific 
school, the light of knowledge radiates to the humblest 
primary school in the remotest village. Far be it from me 
to depreciate the debt we owe our colleges — yet I cannot 
help saying that I think our common schools at this moment 
are in need of a new impulse to make them what they ought 
to be ; and without detriment to anything good the past has 
left us, I look to see that impulse come from the extended 
study of physical and social science. The great problems of 
this day are not the same as the problems of the past. Ee- 
ligion is not dying out of men's minds as foolish men imag- 
ine — religion can never die — but religion is taking on itself 
new forms, as it ever does from generation to generation — 
and to meet the highest mo7'al and spiritual as well as the 
material demands of these new times and this new nation, 
there have been placed in our hands the vast and wonder- 
ful discoveries of modern physical science. Let us not 



no 

foolishly mistrust them or reject them — let us rather reve- 
rently and wisely use them, to serve all the highest pur- 
poses of humanity. 

Let me close, Sir, as I began, *by offering to you and this 
audience my hearty congratulations on the auspicious com- 
mencement of this new institution ; and in behalf of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, older, and yet but 
a little older than you are, let me cordially offer all the 
assistance and co-operation it may be in its power to give. 



The President slightlj'- alluded to the direct and indirect aid of the old 
classics in the active business of life, and introduced Mr. Thomas A. 
Thacher, Professor of the Latin Language and Literature at Yale Col- 
lege, who spoke as follows : 



Mr. President: — I desire to thank the committee of ar- 
rangements for having invited me to be present at this very 
interesting inauguration ; but I regret that some one better 
qualified than I am, is not summoned to respond to this par- 
ticular call. Indeed, my own feeling has been, I may say, 
as I have entered into the pleasantness of these exercises, 
that this was an occasion when Greek and Latin should, in 
the language of President Johnson, "take back seats." It 
emboldens me, however, somewhat, to call to mind that it 
was a very good writer of Latin, who, many centuries ago, 
suirsrested that there was a certain commune vinculmn which 
unites all the various branches of human knowledge. And 
from this it follows, if Cicero may be referred to as an 
authority to-day, that this "common bond" makes us all 
one, however various may be the sciences to the cultivation 
of which we have been severally assigned. From this 
theory it also follows that it is for the advantage of every 
science that every other be cultivated — that the success of 
one confers a measure of success on all the others, and that 
if one member of the whole body of sciences suffer from 
neglect, or contempt, or in any other way, all the members 
must more or less suffer with it. 



Ill 

That frieud of classical education, therefore, who is jeal- 
ous of the progress of the natural sciences or of the pros- 
perity of scientific schools, greatly errs ; for he may be 
sure that such progress and prosperity will, sooner or later, 
bring advantage to his own cherished province also. Is not 
this result already sufficiently indicated by the facts of ex- 
perience? Scientific schools have, for twenty years, been 
in successful operation in Harvard University and Yale Col- 
lege. But while they have been advancing to strength and 
independence, steadily winning the public favor, the regular 
college classes, instead of diminishing, have been growing 
to unprecedented numbers, until the freshman classes in 
these institutions, this year, contain one hundred and sev- 
enty-five candidates for degrees in arts. 

And what is said of the unity of human knowledge is 
also true of our system of education. Indeed, the very 
phraseology we use indicates this. A system is a unit, and 
if all the departments of education are but parts of a grand 
whole, then, certainly, it is essential to the well-being of 
the whole that no one of the parts be neglected, or dwarfed, 
or fail in any way of its full development. Taking, then, a 
liberal and broad view, we may rejoice, unfeignedly, in every 
sign of true progress in every department of education, in 
the improved methods of primary instruction which may be 
observed in the little red district school house, as well as in 
the advances which science is making in the oldest universi- 
ties. Certainly, then, I can rejoice with you. Sir, as I do 
heartily rejoice, in the opening of this new institution, 
which the generous beneficence of a few citizens has to- 
day given to the public. And I cannot forbear to utter, in 
this connection, the thought which presented itself to my 
mind as I listened to the chapter of generosity which was 
read to us this morning. It is this : that every such gift is 
double. First, then, is the material wealth, which passes 
from private to public ownership, and then the donor him- 
self, by his very act, makes himself one of the choicest 
items of the public wealth. For are not eminent citizens, 



112 

those who are emmeiit for their devotion to the public 
interests and the sacrifices they make to promote them, to 
be counted up as the jewels of the state and its substantial 
pride ? And do they not enter as most important elements 
into the power of the community, that complex power 
which gives shape and character to each successive genera- 
tion as it comes on to fill its place of responsibility ? These 
names, Sir, will not die ; they will be worth too much to 
be lost. 

But to return, Mr. Chairman, to the subject for which 
you called me to the platform, I would respectfully dissent 
from an opinion contained in one of the interesting ad- 
dresses of this morning, that it is the object of a classical 
education to teach a man " how to express himself." I would 
claim rather that the object is so to train and discipline his 
mind that he shall have something to express. I hold that 
the great design of education is to teach men to think, to 
transform undisciplined, unthinking boys and girls into 
thoughtful, intellectually matured men and women. This 
great result the schools accomplish by requiring of their 
pupils careful and discriminating thought, day by day — not 
always diflicult thought, but yet, on the whole, of increas- 
ing difficulty to them as they pass on from one stage of 
their education to another. And then the more varied and 
diverse the objects and subjects to which thought is wisely 
directed in the acquisition of knowledge, the more likely 
will the educated youth be to have the versatility and apti- 
tude as well as strenofth of mind which shall fit him to be 
equal to any situation which he may be called to fill. Youth 
held by good teachers to the practice of considerate think- 
ing on worthy subjects, through the years which should be 
devoted to education, will no longer be children in any 
sense when they shall have arrived at the stature of man- 
hood and womanhood. 

For this indispensable mental training no material seems 
to me better than the classical languages, combined as they 
usually are, with a considerable portion of pure mathemat- 



113 

ics — no emery better for polishing and furbishing the human 
intellect than Latin and Greek. Does not this very county 
and this State furnish evidence that a regular college educa- 
tion does not, to say the least, render a man unfit for emi- 
nent success in the mechanic arts and the application of 
science to the instruments of civilization? * Eli Whitney, 
who went from the neighboring town of Westborough to 
Yale College, eighty years ago, and graduated in the year 
1792, and made, in the invention of the cotton gin, one of the 
most important practical contributions to industrial mechan- 
ics, which the world has ever received. If cotton ever was 
king, even for a day, he received his sceptre from a Worces- 
ter County youth, whose wits had been sharpened by a 
regular course of Greek, Latin, mathematics and logic in a 
New England college. 

About twenty years later, Findley Morse — his whole name, 
I am sorry to say, is too long for household use — went from 
another town in Eastern Massachusetts to follow the same 
course of collegiate training ; and the world may be chal- 
lenged to show a more brilliant and useful application of 
science than he made in demonstrating the feasibility of a 
magnetic telegraph. 

But, Sir, it is not a degree from a college which makes 
or unmakes a man. It is good training, wherever obtained. 
And this seems to be the prevailing opinion in your com- 
monwealth, as I judge, from the somewhat careful observa- 
tion of your public education, to which I have been called 
during the last three or four years. I am sure you have 
discovered a most important secret ; that you have found 
out that the most valuable item of wealth in a State is not 
its gold, or its silver, or its houses, or its acres, but its citi-r 
zens — its men and women ; and that the one way of increas- 



* These illustrations of the preceding- thou^^ht occurred to the speaker 
after the Chairman informed him that he might be called on for a word, 
but he did not utter them, lest he might seem to press his subject 
too much. He hopes, however, that it may not be taken amiss, if he 
makes them a part of his desultory and poorly remembered remarks. 

15 



114 

iug this crowuing wealth of a State is by the varied processes 
of education. For what makes the difference in value be- 
tween the influential citizen and his own servant but the 
long continued intellectual, and moral, and physical culture 
which has been the lot of the former? How vast an aggre- 
gate of wealth, then, is secured to the State when only the 
elements of education are secured to each child within its 
borders. Much more when schools for advanced education, 
high schools and graded schools are established in every 
town, open to the free use of all the children and youth. 
In this wise view of the value of universal education, and 
of education of every grade and in all the varied applica- 
tions of knowledge, I fear you have left Connecticut behind. 
But we are protiting by your progress. We have carried 
off some spoils from your borders after repeated menacing 
inroads, and it is to be hoped that we shall yet overtake you 
in this good rivalry. But it must be confessed that the es- 
tablishing of this Institute, so complete in all its parts and 
so wisely comprehensive in its plan, increases the difficulty 
of our task. 

The President then introduced Hon. Emory Washburn, a trustee by 
appointment of the Board of Education, and though not a relative of 
Hon. Ichabod Washburn, a friend and a counsellor of him, and also of 
Mr. Boynton, in relation to the arrangements of this Institution. In his 
response — 

Mr. Washburn complained that the President, by calling 
upon him to speak on this occasion, had broken the contract 
under which he had come there, and he felt that he owed it 
to himself to protest against being obliged to tax so se- 
verely, as he must, the indulgence of the audience, by at- 
tempting to address them after the rich treat which had been 
offered by those who had preceded him. There was, how- 
ever, a conflict in his feelings lest, if he kept silent, he might 
seem to be indifferent to the dignity and importance of the 
occasion which had drawn them together. He would not 
conceal, if he could, the high satisfaction he felt in having 



115 

his own name associated, even in a humble and subordinate 
relation, with the enterprise which they were met to in- 
augurate. 

In such a presence, and amidst the surroundings on which 
the eye rested as it looked out from the beautiful spot where 
they were gathered, he could not fail to pay homage to the 
genius of mechanism and the spirit of enterprise that had 
changed the rural village to which he had come in his early 
manhood, into a city of nearly forty thousand busy, thriving 
people, and had covered these hills with the abodes of ele- 
gance and luxury. This had been chiefly the work of me- 
chanical industry and skill, and he could not forbear, on 
coming back to what had been his pleasant home for so 
many years, to congratulate those who still dwelt here, upon 
the prosperity which they witnessed on every side, and on 
this new element of success which was this day dedicated to 
the advancement of the young men of the city. 

To every word which had been so well said by those who 
had preceded him, he had only to express his hearty assent, 
and nothing remained for him to add in respect to the char- 
acter or purposes of the Institution. But while he had 
listened to these eloquent and pertinent addresses, one view 
of the subject had occurred to his mind, which, it seemed 
to him, had not been sufficiently considered. And, al- 
though it might seem to some minds to partake less of dig- 
nity and importance than the considerations which had been 
urged, he would venture to bring it to their attention, al- 
though he might do so at the hazard of being thought to be 
dealing with mere common-place facts and homely illustra- 
tions. The Institution which commenced its operations 
here to-day, was indeed a monument of far-seeing sagacity 
and muniflcence, which will forever do honor to the men 
who have become its benefactors. But it was not to be 
concealed that it was still imperfect in the completeness of 
its appointments, its apparatus and its corps of teachers. 
So far as they had gone, every thing was satisfactory. But 
many things were still needed. Besides, with the growin<>- 



116 

demand in the county for such instruction as this school is 
designed to impart, the school must itself be enlarged and 
its facilities increased. And as every thing thus far had 
been the results of jjrivate liberality, on the part of gentle- 
men in the county, the school must look to a like liberality 
on that of the mechanics and manufacturers who were to be 
the most directly benefited, to meet their wants and to 
make it what it should be. And here he wished to impress 
upon the minds of the people of the county, that they were 
personally and directly interested in the success of this en- 
terprise. Every parent, no matter how poor or humble he 
may be, if he has a son to educate and start in life, has a 
direct interest in maintaining an Institution which is open to 
all, free of charge, and does what it can to aid every one 
who comes to share its benefits, without regard to birth or 
condition in life. So it is with every young man who is 
seeking an opportunity to fit himself to earn a competence 
in any of the departments of honest industry. And the 
same is true of the manufacturers and master mechanics in 
the county themselves, who employ the labor and skill of 
the workman. This school is for their benefit also. And 
in saying this he was but repeating the views of the gen- 
tlemen who had done so much in founding it. Take the 
case, for illustration, of a young man who after having 
shared the benefits of the common school, goes into a shop 
as an apprentice to learn the trade of a mechanic. He has 
not been taught the laws of mechanism, the nature and 
properties of metals, or the processes by which an end is to 
be reached, which helps to make so large a part of the trade 
he is to learn. People are misled by high-sounding terms, 
and it might seem to be idle to talk about teaching such a 
young man to understand science. There is something in the 
very word science which seems to put it out of the reach 
or comprehension of common minds. And so the a})pren- 
tice goes on, month after month, in doing a thing over and 
over again, till, by repetition, he is able to do it well. 
And he would be surprised to be told that the formida- 



117 

ble something which folks call science, is, in his case, 
simply knowing hoiv to do the tiling. It is finding out 
by repeated experiments what the law or rule is, by 
which an end sought, may be reached or accomplished. 
Now, could he have been taught this as a part of his pre- 
paratory education at school ; could he have been taught the 
mechanical powers, the properties of matter, the effect of 
chemical or mechanical combinations ; before he entered the 
shop or the dye house, he would have been spared this 
waste of time in trials or experiments, and have been ready, 
at once, to be profitable to his employer as well as useful to 
himself. And the employer, too, would be relieved from 
that waste which every mechanic and manufacturer suffers 
from incompetent and unskillful workmen and apprentices, 
by the breakage of tools, damage to materials, and the bad 
character of work done. So palpable is this that it would 
not be difiicult to show its truth by something like an accu- 
rate computation. If he was right in his recollection of the 
products of mechanical labor in Worcester County, in 1865, 
it might be estimated at $25,000,000. This shows not only 
how deep a stake the men of the county have in whatever 
favors their productive industry, but it shows, at the same 
time, their ability to lend aid to whatever could do this. 
There are, he had reason to believe, at least twenty thous- 
and persons employed in the mechanical and manufacturing 
operations in the county. The average active life of these 
cannot be set down at more than twenty years. So that, at 
least, a thousand new operatives come into the business 
every year. Now, if half a year could be practically saved 
and thus added to the capacity and skill of these young- 
men, by a previous preparation, it would be adding five 
hundred years work, in the aggregate of a skilled mechanic, 
to the power of production ; or, to state it in another form, 
the work of five hundred men to the profitable industry of 
the county, and increase, to that extent, the convertible 
resources of her industrial classes. Nor is that all. The 
difference between educated and uneducated labor is not to 



118 

be measured by mere dollars and cents. The advantage 
of the education which our operatives already receive from 
our common schools, is illustrated in the difference which is 
witnessed, every day, between the workman in the English 
shops and our own. There the apprentice learns some one 
department of a trade, and is content to confine himself to 
that alone. He goes through the same operations till he 
becomes as much a machine as the loom or spinning frame 
which he tends. A traveler had told him that when he vis- 
ited a manufactory of. shawls in Paisley, he found a man 
weaving the borders, and upon asking him how or by whom 
these borders were attached to the body of the shawl, he 
was answered that "he never inquired, he supposed it was 
done in some of the upper rooms, and that was all he could 
tell about it." In what shop in this country would such a 
thing be true of a Yankee operative? When one of the 
Lowell companies began to print their goods, they sent for 
a competent head of their works to England. He brought 
with him workmen skilled in the various processes, but 
being in want of others he employed a number of Yankee 
hands, putting some of them to work upon one of the 
processes and some upon another. In less than a year, he 
was astonished by a request from one of these to be trans- 
ferred from one part of the work to another. He was still 
more puzzled when, to his inquiry, this operative admitted 
that he had nothing to complain of in the work he had been 
doing ; and he pressed him for a reason why he wanted to 
change. "Do you suppose," said the operative, "that I am 
going to stay in that room all my days ? You hired me to 
work in your print works, and I expect to understand what 
printing is before I get through." And, said the superin- 
tendent, in giving an account of his first experience with 
raw Yankees, "these men had not been there three years 
before they knew how to do every part of the work." In 
another similar establishment, with which he was acquainted, 
the head of the dyeing department, counting upon his su- 
perior skill and experience, and believing that these could 



119 

not be supplied without great difficulty, became so exor- 
bitant in his deraaiids, that his employers refused to com- 
ply with them, and he left the work. The head man in the 
repair shop, who had never served any apprenticeship to 
the business of a dyer, but had had his natural good sense 
and mother wit cultivated by education and habits of obser- 
vation, was put into the place w^hich had been thus vacated, 
and in a very few weeks his employers found they had 
actually gained by the exchange. Pie did not, however, 
want any better illustration of what might be accomplished 
by native good sense, cultivated by education and disci- 
plined by observation, when aided by experience and sus- 
tained by good judgment and strong resolution, than might 
be seen in the history of one of the founders ot this insti- 
tution. He had learned the trade of a mechanic, as an ap- 
prentice, in a neighboring town. While thus emplo^^ed, 
there was nothing to mark him beyond the same unpreten- 
tious qualities which have distinguished him ever since — dili- 
gence, fidelity to duty, an unblemished life and a steady 
resolve to improve himself and deserve the confidence of 
others. After completing his apprenticeship, he came to 
Worcester, and, after several years, engaged in a manufac- 
ture which he had built up by his own enterprise, and in 
w^hich he has attained an excellence that is not surpassed by 
any manufacturer in the world. Yet though he had in this 
way risen to the possession of wealth, and an enviable po- 
sition of respect and social influence in this community, it 
was only after repeated efi'orts and failures in his endeavors 
to attain to the requisite skill, that he was able to deduce 
the true laws of science in the manufacture in which he was 
engaged, from the experiments which he had made and the 
inferences derived from his own reasoning and observation. 
To do this, however, involved the loss of time and money, 
and the depression of repeated disappointments which 
would have disheartened a less resolute nature, until, at 
last, he triumphed in a complete success. Now no one 
need be told that if, instead of this, he could have had some 



120 

competent teacher to sit down and detail to him, before he 
had begun, the several processes by which he now trans- 
forms the metal, in its primitive state, to the perfect article 
which finds its way to every market, he would have been 
spared this waste of time and money, and the tax upon his 
nervous energy which it had cost him to be his own teacher. 

And it was one of the strong motives, on the part of 
that gentleman, in contributing so liberally towards the es- 
tablishment of this institution, to save the young men, who 
should come after him, from the disappointments, the per- 
plexity and discouragement which he had to encounter and 
overcome before attaining that skill and science in his busi- 
ness which were now brint^ino^ their rcAvard. It was his 
own experience that first suggested to him what that want 
was which he has now done so much to supply. 

He could not, therefore, forbear, in closing, congratulat- 
ing those who had listened to him with so much indulgence, 
that Worcester County was, at last, in possession of a 
school which was to remedy and supply so many of the 
defects and disadvantages under which her industry had 
hitherto labored, and that its privileges are offered freely to 
every young man who will reach forth a hand to receive 
them. 

Hon. George F. Hoar, M. C, roember of the board of trustees, was 
introduced, and spoke of the assurance the public has in the usefuhiess 
of the Institute, in the fact that it is the result of their own contribu- 
tions. The Institute is the result of individual benefactions, contrary to 
the system of the old world, where government and ecclesiastical bodies 
assume the establishment and control of educational institutions. He 
paid a high compliment to tlie general generosity of the public, and es- 
pecially mentioned the gift of Mr. James White of $1700. besides val- 
uable counsel, and the services or Mr, Abram Firth in inaugurating the 
enterprise. He also commended the remarks of the previous speakers 
in regard to the relations of classical and scientific education, claiming 
equal rank and value for both, and commending the pursuit of either in 
accordance with the ultimate purpose or pursuit in life. The general 
intelligence of the mechanics of Worcester of the present day, was com- 
mended, as promising the success of the Institute, and he appealed to 
the public for liberal contribution of funds to add to the endowment, 
that the Institute may fill its full place among the educational institutions 



121 

of the land. The necessity of such education as this Institute can give, 
was especially urged, from the fact that the general elevation of the 
public intellect is the only means of counteracting tlie stream of ignor- 
ance which is continually pouring upon our shores from the Old World, 
and rapidly mingling with the native element, as its equal in political 
power. It is from considerations such as these that we are induced to 
work for the establishment and perpetuation of educational institutions 
like that which we inaugurate to-day. 

The President then invited Hon. Henry Chapin, Judge of Probate and 
Insolvency, who replied as follows : 

Mr. President : — If it is in order and no other one wishes 
to speak, I propose to move an adjournment, and to ask the 
previous question upon my motion. I listened to the ex- 
ercises of the morning and took solid comfort in doing so. I 
learned thoroughly what is meant by a School of Industrial 
Science. I was not quite clear yesterday, when some one 
asked me its meaning, but after the able and lucid exposi- 
tions of Professors Lyman and Woodman, and the enthusi- 
astic, soul-stirring address of Mr. Thompson, your Princi- 
pal, every one present must be perfectly at home upon the 
subject. I said that I took solid comfort this morning. I 
should have done the same thing this afternoon had not the 
President significantly touched me upon the shoulder before 
we came back from the collation, and I have known him so 
well in my experience of the last few years, that I feared 
the significance of the gesture which he practiced upon me. 

I do not propose to speak upon the subject of the school, 
except to express my admiration of the generous manner in 
which it has been founded. The President has asked me to 
speak officially upon this subject, and as Judge of the Pro- 
bate Court for the County of Worcester, I wish to say dis- 
tinctly and unequivocally, that I approve of men of means 
diposing of their property for benevolent purposes during 
their lives. It does not particularly raise my respect to see 
a man holding on to every dollar to the last, and when he is 
obliged to part with it, seeming to attempt to make the best 

bargain he can for himself by some professedly benevolent 

16 



122 

disposition of it. But when a live man invests his means 
in some charitable object, or some public institution, he 
seems to infuse into it something of that vital energy and 
activity by which it seems to become a live institution, gift- 
ed with the possession of a living soul. When I look at 
some of these Institutions which are the result of provisions 
which have been wrenched, as it were, from the possessor 
by the grasp of death, I am reminded of the remark of an 
old friend of mine, who applied to a stingy individual the 
theory that every new-born child became the possessor of 
the soul of some one who departed this life at the moment of 
the birth of the child. Said he, "When that man was born 
nobody died." So it is with certain classes of institutions. 
They seem to me to have no souls in them, because nobody 
died. The glory of this school of Industrial Science, which 
we dedicate to-day, is that it was founded by the voluntary 
contributions of living men, and as I look upon this splendid 
edifice, so faithfully and appropriately constructed, it seems 
to me to be radiant with the souls of those whose means 
have contributed to its establishment and erection. 

Would that Deacon Washburn could have left his sick 
room and joined in the exercises and festivities of this 
occasion. 

Would that John Boynton could have lived to see this day 
and rejoice in the result of his friendly gift, donated in his 
life-time. His act would have been more surprising to me 
than it was, had he not a number of years ago inquired of 
me if I knew of any institution which he could endow with 
a few thousand dollars ? Knowing him to be a man of rath- 
er an economical turn of mind, I had very little expectation 
that he would ever part with any of his money for literary 
or scientific purposes during his life. Yet, when his friend, 
David Whitcomb, spoke of the unknown donor of the sum 
of one hundred thousand dollars, I was not unprepared to 
suspect that Mr. Boynton was the man. Still, much as I 
was surprised at the act of John Boynton, the action of your 



123 

president, Ichabod Washburn, and James White created in 
me no surprise whatever. In common phrase, I have had 
occasion to measure these men ; and when your president 
touches me so signilicantly upon the shoulder, and gives me 
such unlimited authority to speak, I shall take the liberty to 
say in reference to him and Dea. Washburn, that when I see 
a man put his name for the sum of one thousand dollars to a 
subscription paper, and have the coolness when you call 
upon him, to draw his check in your favor for tw^o thousand 
dollars ; and when I see a man who has purchased an estate 
for charitable purposes, for the sum of twenty-five thousand 
dollars, and upon the receipt of the papers, which he had a 
perfectly legal and honorable right to receive for the original 
contract price, voluntarily give his check for one thousand 
dollars more than his legal or moral obligation demanded, I 
am authorized to say, and I will say, that such acts elevate 
my idea of human nature, and make me feel that it is an 
honor to belong to a community where such men are known 
and honored. 

Allow me to add one word more. This prosperous and 
enterprising city abounds in mechanics and manufacturers 
of abundant means and rich in resources. The same re- 
mark may not apply so appropriately to those of us who 
are limited to the incomes of professional life. I see before 
me a goodly number of rich and prosperous men, and, as 
Judge of the Probate Court of the County of Worcester, 
fully authorized by your President, my advice to you is, to 
settle a liberal portion of your estates during your own 
lives, and do not leave them for your heirs to quarrel about. 
Therefore, when you look upon this splendid edifice, stand- 
ing upon this beautiful hill, overlooking this fair city like a 
beacon light of science and civilization ; when you hear the 
names of its noble benefactors, already spoken in tones of 
gratitude and affection, destined to grow more and more 
honored with the progress of the generations ; when you 
shall begin to realize in your own souls the truth of the 



124 

immortal declaration, that " it is more blessed to give than 
to receive," — then indulge, for once, the luxury of empty- 
ing your coffers and "go and do likewise." 



Judge Chapin alluded to the agreeable and bountiful collation, which 
had been so highly enjoyed, and moved that the thanks of the company 
be tendered to the ladies and gentlemen of Worcester, for their elegant 
hospitality. This was unanimously voted, and the assembly was dis- 
solved. 



MEMORIAL NOTICE OF HON. ICHABOD WASHBURN. 



At a meeting of the Trustees of the Worcester County Free Institute 
of Industrial Science, held January 2, 1869, to take notice of the death 
.of Hon. Ichabod Washburn, a Trustee of the Institute, Mr. Salisbury, 
the President, thus addressed the Trustees : 

Gentlemen : — It is the dictate of duty and of proper sentiment that 
we should devote an early hour of this day to an interchang-e of 
thoughts on the death of our respected associate, Hon. Ichabod Wash- 
burn, who, after a long course of distressing disease, with painful and 
increasing physical disability, died at his home in this city, on the 30th 
ultimo, at the age of seventy years, four months and nineteen days. 
The important institution which is intrusted to our care, and from 
which so much of good is demanded and hoped for, had no more 
devoted friend, no more wise counsellor and no more eflQcient pro- 
moter than he. When the founder of the Institute, John Boynton, 
Esq., had provided for the intellectual training of our youth in those 
studies which would fit them for the productive arts, on which civiliza- 
tion and human progress will depend, Mr. Washburn came forward to 
give application and visible utility to the important department of me- 
chanical science by erecting a handsome and commodious machine 
shop on the grounds of the corporation, and furnishing it with a steam 
engine and machinery, and by providing a fund for the compensation 
of the superintendent of the machine shop and of the hired workmen, 
and for some aid in the support of some of the pupils as apprentices ; 
and all this was done by an expenditure greatly exceeding his first offer 
to this board. 

It was a noble generosity in our friend to provide for the youth of 
this and future time a more certain and easier way to win a share of 
the great success which he obtained by persevering, patient and difficult 
efforts. He was happy to remember, and no right-minded man could 
hear him tell without increasing admiration, that when he was an ap- 
prentice boy to a blacksmith in Leicester he paid for his seat in the 
church by making irons for a kitchen fire. He was afterwards a stu- 
dent in Leicester Academy, and for many years he has been a very use- 
ful trustee of that ancient and respected academy. In 1834 he estab- 
lished the manufacture of card wire in Worcester, and soon, by the su- 



126 

periority of his product, supplanted the supply of the imported article. 
His machinery and processes were originated and improved by his own 
studies and experiments, and other varieties of wire-drawing were ad- 
ded and the works were enlarged by additional buildings of greater 
productive capacity, from time to time, until the Washburn & Moen 
Manufacturing Company now carry on an establishment which takes a 
high rank for skill and amount of production among the best manufac- 
tories of our country. 

Mr. Washburn was a man of great industry in the labor of his mind — 
the wasting toil, which sometimes consumes the life, while it shows no 
cause without why the man dies. But he had great constitutional 
strength, which was apparent in what he could accomplish in his 
active days, and in long resistance to the severe disease by which his 
life was terminated. He will be remembered as a public benefactor for 
his honored example of industrj^ and thrift, for the large employment 
he provided for the labor of others, and for the wealth he added, 
directly and indirectly, to the aggregate of the community. He is 
and will be honored for the liberal use of his wealth, for the aid he 
gave to institutions of learning far and near, and for his constant con- 
tributions for the support of churches and institutions for the promo- 
tion of the religious views which his judgment approved and his heart 
warmly cherished, and for other important public enterprises ; and his 
departure will be lamented with more tender emotions by tlie numerous 
children of want and sorrow who were rarely disappointed in reasona- 
ble expectations of pecuniary aid from his private and cheerful bounty. 

Let us not forget that his great endowment in this Institute was at- 
tended by a circumstance which does high honor to his generosity. He 
had intended to perpetuate his personal connection with the mechanic 
arts, by being the sole originator of such a school, and consulted with 
friends on the subject, and he was surprised when Mr. Boyntou had 
occupied the ground. But he expressed no disappointment, and 
promptly made a donation for the building for instruction. Soon after, 
with the practical wisdom that distinguished him, he created the depart- 
ment which is the peculiar attraction and strength of this institute. 
This great benefaction was not a solitary expression of his good will to 
the pursuits to which he devoted his life. The aggregate of his gifts to 
the Worcester County Mechanics Association was nearly $30,000, 
chieHy appropriated towards the building of the beautiful hall, which 
is designed, primarily, to promote the education and gratify the retined 
taste of those engaged in the mechanic arts, and he made other liberal 
gifts for kindred objects. Let us consider, also, for our own admoni- 
tion, his anxious interest and his faithful attention to his duties as a 
member of our board. Let us recall his personal presence, in his 
gentle and friendly courtesy, which was happilj" combined with his de- 
cided opinions and his strong will ; and his modest carriage, which did 
not conceal that personal independence which he had honorably ac- 
quired. As a man and a Christian he gratefully enjoj'^ed the suc- 
cess he was permitted to achieve. Though he had no ambition for 



127 

political distinction, he served as a member of the school committee, 
and was a representative and a senator in the State Legislature. 

I will not abuse the privilege of introducing the thoughts of the hour. 
This honorable chair gives me no right to supersede your deliberations 
by ray own discourse, and if it were permitted, I could not pro- 
nounce his eulogy. Without any connection of partnership, for half 
of our lives Mr. Washburn and I were connected by the closest business 
relations and an extraordinary degree of mutual confidence, and in all 
that period our friendship was not interrupted nor jarred by the slight- 
est offence or misunderstanding. He gratified me by alluding to this, 
in taking leave of me at his bedside about a year ago, when he and 
his friends thought the hour of his death had come — and I will again 
say farewell to my friend with the solemn cheerfulness w^hich the poet 
Bryant so well expresses : 

" Why weep ye then for him, who having won 

The bounds of man's appointed years, at last. 

Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done. 

Serenely to his final rest has passed ; 

While the soft memory of his virtues yet 

Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun has set." 

Yes, I am persuaded that, in the mercy of God, he has gone to the 
rest that is congenial to his energetic spirit, the rest of other and better 
occupation, not of inactive repose. As the deeds of men are written on 
the sands of earth and the inscription is soon obliterated by the current 
of events, I offer the following resolutions to prolong, as they may, on 
our records and in our hearts, the wholesome influence of a useful and 
honored life : 

Resolved, That as an act of duty we will inscribe on our record, that on the 
30th day of December, 1868, our respected associate, Hon. Ichabod Washburn, 
died at his home, in the city of Worcester, after a long course of painful and ex- 
hausting disease, with intervals of relief, at the age of 70 3'ears, 4 months and 19 
days. By this event this institute has lost its second founder, who placed on the 
basis of intellectual education provided by Mr. Boynton, a superstructure for the 
practical application of mechanical science, in training the accurate eye and the 
skillful hand. 

Resolved, That we will hold in honorable remembrance tiie services which Mr. 
Washburn rendered to the city of his residence, and to our country, in improving 
the machinery and processes of mechanic art, in providing larger occupation and 
more honorable position and compensation for manual labor, and in the increase 
which he has made in the aggregate wealth of the community and in the inde- 
pendence and happiness of many homes. 

Resolved, That we will cherish the memory of our respected associate, for his 
faithful and consistent life, for his industry and thrift, and for the liberal use of 
the wealth which he acquired, in his munificent aid of Christian influences and 
enterprises, in the promotion of education at home and abroad, in his open hand 
to those who were struggling for advancement in life, and to those who were op- 
pressed by sickness and poverty, and in the furtherance of all movements for the 
improvement of men. 

Resolved, That while we lament this loss as a calamity to this institute, and a 
sad privation to ourselves, we will contemplate, for our own imitation, the zealous 
service and the prudent counsels of our associate in the trust that is committed to 
us, and the courtesy and independence with which he aided us in our duties. 



128 

Resolved, That we will express our respect and friendship by attending the 
funeral of Mr. Washburn after the adjournment of this meeting. 

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions shall be presented to Mrs. Washburn 
and the family of our associate, with the assurance of our sympathy in the loss of 
such a friend, for which the recollections* of friendship and Christian hopes are 
the best alleviation. 



HON. EMORY WASHBURN'S ADDRESS. 

Mr. Washburn desired to second the resolutions offered by the Presi- 
dent, though the full and appreciative notice of the life and character of 
their deceased associate and friend rendered any remarks, on his part, 
unnecessary. And yet, as it had been his privilege to have known Mr. 
Washburn intimately and familiarly from his youth, something, per- 
haps, was due in addition to what had been so w^ell said, to the memory 
of one, who had, through a long and honorable life, fulfilled the early 
promises which had won the confidence and esteem of all who had 
known him as a diligent, hard-working apprentice. He has illustrated 
in his life the maxim that the child is the parent of the man. The same 
law of culture and refinement, the same desire for improvement and to 
excel in whatever he undertook, which distinguished his after life, were 
early exhibited in the traits of his youth. Mr. W. had first known him 
at his entering upon his apprenticeship, in Leicester, in the shop of a 
mechanic. He had come there a stranger, with no connexions or asso- 
ciations to prompt or encourage him to any higher efforts than to learn 
the details of a laborious trade. Nor did he find in his employer any 
thing to inspire any higher aims or purposes. But from the first, he 
manifested an innate taste and desire for a higher education and a cul- 
ture above that to be found in the training of the shop. And with these 
was also developed that calm, undemonstrative firmness of purpose 
which enabled him to surmount the difliculties and embarrassments 
which, in most young men, would have deterred them from making the 
effort. We accordingly find him obtaining the means of attending the 
academy in that town, by earnings gained by him in little sums by over- 
work in the shop, and by making use of the hours usually devoted by 
apprentices to rest or amusement. It was the same trait of character 
which he afterwards exemplified in his patient and persevering strug- 
gles to perfect a new branch of business in which he engaged, and 
which was crowned with such signal success. It marked his course 
through life, and sustained him in his early efforts in this city, to which 
he had come after completing his term of apprenticeship, without capi- 
tal or patronage, or any I'esources beyond his own hands, a hopeful 
spirit and a firm resolve to merit success. 

Though he made no pretensions to superiority among those with 



129 

whom his lot was cast, he had many of the unmistakable traits of char- 
acter which mark a o^reat man. His reach of foresiiJ:ht, the accuracy of 
his judofment, the quiet self-reliance which led him ri*^ht on to the ac- 
complishment of whatever he undertook, were stimulated and sustained 
by the hig-h motives and generous aims which guided him in all his en- 
terprises, and never suffered him to be disheartened by difficulties that 
stood in his way. Show him what was right, and nothing could swerve 
him from the course of dut3^ In such a case, he knew no line of 
policy but that of rectitude. Although he began with little or no 
means, and had to struggle with many difficulties and disappointments 
before he could command resources in his business, a delicacy of senti- 
ment, which did honor to his nice sensibility, would not allow him to 
make use of funds which were lawfully his own, but upon which others 
might, in certain contingencies, have an equitable claim. And instead, 
as is so often the case, of feeling a desire to hoard and accumulate 
wealth, in the success of prosperous enterprise, because of his having 
once felt the want of it, his heart seemed to expand, and his hand to 
open to the calls of charity and benevolence in proportion to his grow- 
hig means of indulging the prevailing spirit of his nature. 

There was also something in the character of his benefactions and the 
objects of his bouiit}' . which indicated the respect which he always felt 
for whatever tended to elevate and improve society and individuals. 
Education was an object of special interest on his part. He contributed 
to theological seminaries, he helped to found or aid existing colleges and 
insiitutions of learning. You have paid but a fitting tribute to his mu- 
nificence in helping to found and build up the institute of which you 
have, in part, the charge. It will, we trust, be a monument of his fore- 
sight and liberality as long as science and the arts shall continue to shed 
their blessings on the human race. Nor will it be found that his benefi- 
cence ceased with the termination of his useful and active life. Many 
who, like him, are to make their way into life by diligence, good conduct 
and the aids of education, will have occasion to remember with deep grati- 
tude and respect the renewal of that princely bounty which he bestowed 
upon this institution in his lifetime. Nor this alone — other institutions 
of charity and benevolence, founded by his munificence, will leave a 
record which posterity will read, of how much better the world has 
been made for his having lived. 

He would not forbear to refer to one prhiciple which their friend had 
so beautifully illustrated in his whole life, and that was the religion 
which he professed. It was seen in his daily walk, in his intercourse 
with men, in the sustaining power by which he passed through the fur- 
nace of affliction, in the sweetness and winning manner which drew to 
him the confidence of children, and the love and veneration of those to 
whose physical wants and spiritual comforts he so faithfully ministered, 
in his devotion to duty, and the entire consecration of himself and all 
he possessed to the honor and service of the Master whom he so dili- 
gently and faithfully served. 

Nor would the picture of his life be complete if this pervading trait in 

17 



130 

his character were to be omitted. It crave to his worldly success a new 
claim to admiration, to mark the modest humility with which he bore 
prosperity, and the devout gratitude which he paid to that Pro\idence 
w^hich had made him an instrument of so much good to others. 



REMARKS BY REV. DR. HILL. 

Rev. Dr. Hill followed in a few brief remarks. Judge Washburn, he 
said, has described the deceased in his boyhood, as he had known him, a 
pupil of Leicester Academy, and a poor young man just entering on the 
career of life in our city. I have seen him at probably a later period 
than any one here present. I called at his house on Saturday, just 
before nightfall — a few hours only before the last access of the disease 
which separated him from conscious intercourse with the living, and 
terminated in his death. I had not seen him, except for a single mo- 
ment on the same day, since his first attack, twelve months ago. I 
thought him changed. His cheeks were sallow and sunken ; there was 
an unnatural gleam in his eyes ; an unwonted tremor and tenderness in 
his voice. He had had a peculiarly happy day. He had been driven 
out to the neighboring town of Millbury, and visited the scientiiic 
school, and spoke with especial animation of the pleasure which he had 
enjoyed, and melted as he spoke. 

I am most grateful for that interview and recall it with satisfaction 
because, in the few moments of its occurrence, the distinctive traits of 
Mr. Washburn's character were illustrated more broadly than they 
might have been in many hours. His pecularities were strong in 
death. No one who knew him could have failed to notice in him a 
prompt, genial disposition to acknowledge the surprising changes which 
had come over him in the course of his mortal experience. He had 
been greatly prospered, a rare success had attended him in his business, 
and his means of usefulness had grown to an almost fabulous extent. 
But, like the English bishop, who had the shoemaker's bench on which 
he used to work borne to his palace and kept there as a precious me- 
morial of his early struggles, Mr. Washburn was fond of reminding 
himself and telling others from what humble beginnings he had risen — 
how he had come to this cit3% then an inconsiderable country town, 
carrying all his eftects in a little bundle under his arm; and how. when 
he was a pupil at Leicester, he went to the anvil and forged hooks and 
bolts in order to pay his pew rent; and how he laid his first off"ering on 
the altar of charity — more memorable for the disinterestedness of the 
motive than the largeness of the gift. So on this last night of our inter- 
view. He spoke to me of his interest in the shop connected with the 
scientific school — how he longed to have it brought to a completion and 



131 

consecrated to its work. "O, let me but live to see that! How would 
I like to beat out the first piece of iron in that building"! " 

Another characteristic remark followed. He had long borne on his 
heart the condition of his fellow mechanics. Prospered, he embraced, 
in his sympathies those who were still in the heat and dust of me- 
chanic labor. He sought to afford facilities for lif^htening mechanic 
labor and improvement in mechanic skill. He projected, many years 
ago, building a shop in which apprentices might be taught the practice 
while they learned the rules of the trade. It had been a long-cherished 
scheme for whose success he had expended thought and made large 
pecuniary arrangements. And when he learned that Mr. Boynton had 
given a munificent sum for the founding of a Technical institution, 
though he was disappointed that his favoilte plan for benefiting the 
mechanic had been anticipated, he cheerfully 3ielded and became sub- 
oi'dinate where he had intended to lead and associate his name with this 
magnificent enterprise. But though thwarted in this respect, no parti- 
cle of jealousy rankled in his bosom. He gave to the institution as 
generously as if he had been leader and not follower in the project. 
He said to me his heart was pi-ofoundly in this work — ''I mean to spare 
no pains nor expense to make the shop as complete in every part as it 
is possible to do." 

Then, again, his giving, at first prompted a by delicate conscience, at 
length ripened into a passion. Inconsiderable, at first, like hers who 
threw only two mites into the treasury, with the increase of his property 
it grew until it became boundless. He listened patiently to every claim 
upon his bounty. Steward of the heavenly Benefactor, he limited his 
gifts to no class of objects, but freely dispensed them to whatever might 
promote the interests of knowledge, religion and humanity. Though 
an uneducated man, he could appreciate the value of liberal studies, 
and was the benefactor of more than one of the feeble colleges of the 
land. Though in possession of a princely income, he had nothing to 
spend on personal luxuries — everything to encourage and help those 
who needed. He founded and sustained a chapel for the benefit of the 
poor in the city, and was equally ready to feed a 'starving family at 
home, to clothe a naked company of freedmen in Georgia, or to hang a 
bell on a vacant church-tower in Maine. 

But the hour approaches when we must bring these pleasant remi- 
niscences to a close and follow in the funeral procession which accom- 
panies our revered friend to the place of his repose. He heeded well 
the suggestions of a believing and adoring heart, and served his day 
and generation. He has finished his course. He has left rare memo- 
rials behind, more enduring than brass or marble. He has gone to 
his reward. And '• blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they 
rest from their labors and their works do follow them." 



132 

Hon. George F. Hoar said he cordially agreed with the sentiments 
which had been expressed, and spoke of the character and eminence 
of Mr. Washburn as a peculiar product of the institutions of our coun- 
try, but has furnished no report of his remarks. 

The resolutions were then unanimously adopted, and the trustees ad- 
journed to attend the funeral. 



W O II C E S T E n (; O U N 'I' Y 

Ixtt institute 0f inilMStrkI ^cieEiCi 



ADDRESSES 



OK 



INAUGURATION AND DEDICATION, 



WORCESTER. NOVEMBER 11. 18G8. 



iMEMORlAL NOTICE OF JOHN BOYNTON, Esq., 

JJotmtier of Hje Engtttute. 



MEMORIAL NOTICE OF HON. ICHABOD WASHBURN, 

Jountier of i\]z practical fflfctanical Sfpartment 
\ 



^y O II C E S 1' E R : 
PRINTED BY CHARLES HAMILTON, 

PALLADIUM OFFICE. 
1869. 









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